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Teaching Percussion
with Videos
E n h a n c ed T h i r d E d i t i o n
Gary D. Cook
Professor Emeritus—University of Arizona
Artist in Residence—University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Australia ● Brazil ● Mexico ● Singapore ● United Kingdom ● United States
Copyright 2019 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
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Enhanced Third Edition
Gary D. Cook Unless otherwise noted, all content is © Cengage
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Printed in the United States of America

Print Number: 01 Print Year: 2017
b r ie f c o ntent s
CONTENTS v
VIDEO TRACKS xii
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION xix
About the Author xxxi
CH APTER 1 General Considerations and Prerequisites 1
CH APTER 2 Basic Percussion Technique Through the Study

of the Snare Drum 24
CH APTER 3 Multiple Percussion 79
CH APTER 4 Keyboard Percussion 93
CH APTER 5 Timpani 157
CH APTER 6 Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories 215
CH APTER 7 Percussion Instruments of the World 253
CH APTER 8 Drum Set 294
CH APTER 9 Marching Percussion 329
CH APTER 10 Musical Interpretation of Percussion Parts 425
CH APTER 11 Supplemental Playing Exercises 454
APPENDIX A Orchestral Excerpts for Percussion and Discography

of Percussion Music 471
APPENDIX B Select Percussion Solo and Ensemble Music 481
Glossary of Foreign Terms 507
Bibliography 510
Index 514
iii
det a i l ed c o ntent s
VIDEO TRACKS xii
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION xix
About the Author xxxi
CH APTER 1 General Considerations and Prerequisites 1

Percussion Performance and Education 2
General Considerations 2
Classification of Instruments 2
Tone Production on Percussion Instruments 5
Notation Systems for Percussion 7
Interpretation of Notation 8
Organizing the Beginning Percussion Program 10
Selecting the Percussion Student 11
Training the Beginning Percussionist 12
Organizing the Percussion Section 13
Recommended Percussion Instrumentation 14
Recommended Sticks and Mallets 16
Instrument and Percussionist Assignments 16
Location of the Percussion Section in the Ensemble 17
Percussion Instrument Substitution 17
General Maintenance and Head Replacement 18
Motivating the Percussionist 19
Percussion Method Books 20
Individual Instrument Methods 20
Combined Percussion Methods 20
Percussion Ensemble Collections 20
General Guides to Percussion 21
Percussive Arts Society 23
Notes 23
CH APTER 2 Basic Percussion Technique Through the Study

of the Snare Drum 24
Historical Origins 24
The Snare Drum 25
Construction 25
Care and Maintenance 27
Tuning 28
Stands 29
Sticks 29
Playing Areas 30
Tom Tom, Field Drum, Tenor Drum, and Roto-Toms 31
v
vi D e t aile d Co n t e n ts
The Attitude Toward Percussion Performance and Education 33

Matched and Traditional Grip 35
Instrument Height and Stance 36
A Concept of the Grip and Stroke 37
The Pivot Point or Fulcrum 38
The Grip 38
The Basic Percussion Stroke 39
Basic Drumming Technique 44
Rebounds, Doubles, and Rolls 45
Roll Interpretation 51
The Stroke-and-a-Bounce and Finger Stroke Control 57
Accent Studies 61
Grace Note Figures (Flams and Drags/Ruffs) 62
Special Effects—Rim and Stick Shots and Others 66
Sticking Policies 66
Phrasing 70
The Strokes 71
Individual Snare Drum Methods and Supplemental Studies 73
Major Applied Methods 73
Supplemental Studies 74
Snare Drum Technique 75
Selected Solos 76
Notes 78
CHA PTER 3 Multiple Percussion 79

History and Definitions 79
Notational Systems 80
Additional Considerations 86
Multiple-Percussion Studies and Solos 89
Methods and Solo Collections 89
Selected Solos 89
CHA PTER 4 Keyboard Percussion 93

Origins and Classifications 93
Instrument Characteristics 94
Xylophone 94
Marimba 95
Vibraphone (Vibraharp or Vibe) 97
Glockenspiel or Concert Bells 99
Marching Bell Lyre 101
Chimes 101
Crotales 103
Celesta 104
Unique Instruments 105
Mallets 106
Keyboard Percussion Technique 107
The Grip 107
Playing Areas on the Bars 109
The Approach 110
The Stroke 110
The Full Stroke Technique 111
The Touch-Lift Stroke 114
The Sustained Tone or Roll 116
D et a i l ed C o nt ent s vii
Special Effects 118

Keyboard Percussion Reading 119
Expression and Phrasing On Keyboard Percussion Instruments 125
Multiple Mallets 127
The Traditional Cross-Grip 128
The Musser (Stevens) Grip 130
The Burton Grip 132
Multiple-Mallet Keyboard Percussion Technique 133
Vibraphone Technique 143
Individual Keyboard Methods and Supplemental Studies 146
Vibraphone Methods 148
Other Music Adaptable to Keyboard Percussion Study 149
Selected Solos 150
Notes 156
CH APTER 5 Timpani 157

Historical Origins 157
Performance Considerations 158
Developing the Timpanist 160
Ear Training 160
Practicing 162
Instruments and Mallets 163
Construction and Manufacturers 163
Heads 164
Mallets 165
Sizes and Ranges 167
Head and Mechanical Adjustments 168
Head Replacement/Selecting the Playing Spot 172
Fine Tuning/Clearing Heads 173
Timpani Technique 175
Position of the Timpani and Playing Areas 176
Tuning a Pitch 177
Basic Tuning Exercise 178
Performance Tuning 179
Tuning Gauges 181
Intonation Tempering 184
The Grips 185
The Basic Timpani Stroke 186
Articulation Considerations and Musical Expression 188
Rolls, Finger Strokes, and Forearm 196
Forte-Piano Rolls 200
Muffling 201
Muting 203
Cross Sticking 204
Individual Timpani Methods and Supplemental Studies 209
Orchestral Excerpts 210
Reference Books and Videos 211
Selected Solos 211
Notes 214
viii D e t aile d Co n t e n ts
CHA PTER 6 Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories 215

The Bass Drum 215
Construction and Selection 215
Heads 215
Tuning 216
Stands 216
Humidifiers 217
Mallets 218
Playing Techniques 221
The Art of Playing Bass Drum and Attached Cymbal 224
Cymbals 225
Origins 225
Straps and Pads 226
Care 226
Crash Cymbals 227
Suspended Cymbals 230
Triangle 231
Origins 231
Selection 232
Clips 232
Beaters 233
Tambourine 234
Origins 234
Selection 235
Care 235
Gongs and Tam Tams 238
Origins 238
Mallets and Racks 239
Castanets 240
Origins 240
Wood Blocks 242
Origins 242
Temple Blocks 243
Origins 243
Less Common Instrumental Accessories 244
Finger Cymbals 244
Cowbells 244
Sleigh Bells 244
Slapstick 245
Ratchet 246
Metal Plates, Anvils, and Pipes 246
Brake Drums 246
Percussion Aerophones, Toys, and Exotic Instruments 246
Sandpaper Blocks 247
D et a i l ed C o nt ent s ix
Horns 248
Marching Machine and Horses’ Hooves 248
Lujon 248
Slit Drums and Log Drums 248
Wind Chimes 249
Methods and Studies for Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories 251
Notes 252
CH APTER 7 Percussion Instruments of the World 253

African Influences and Styles 254
African Roots 254
Kinka 254
Kpanlogo 259
Afro-Cuban Influences and Styles 264
Claves 265
Bongos 266
Congas 268
Timbales 271
Cowbells 273
Guiro 274
Maracas 274
Jawbone (Quijada) and Vibra-Slap 275
Brazilian Influences and Styles 275
Surdo 275
Repiníque 276
Other Brazilian Instruments 276
Hand Drums of the World 279
Middle Eastern Influences and Styles 279
Global Frame Drumming and Groove Tunes 280
Tabla 283
Steel Drums 285
Percussion of the World: Methods and Study Materials 289
CH APTER 8 Drum Set 294

Origins and Evolution 294
Dixieland Drumming 295
The Swing Era and Big Band Drumming 296
Bop, Cool Jazz, and Hard Bop 296
Contemporary Eclectic and Rock Styles 297
Instruments 298
Tuning and Heads 300
Cymbals 300
Electronic Percussion and Technology in Education 301
Current Electronic Percussion Instruments 301
Using Technology as a Tool 302
Other Technologies for the Classroom 303
Concepts for Drum Set Study and Performance 305
Body Awareness and Instrument Setup 305
Musical Awareness 306
Performance Techniques 307
Developing the Feet 308
Ride Cymbal Time 310
x D e t aile d Co n t e n ts
Coordinated Independence, Four-Way Coordination,

Interdependence 313
Movement Around the Drums 315
Chart Reading and Interpretation 315
Brushes 317
Basic Styles and Considerations 317
Drum Set Methods, DVDs, Videos, and Supplemental Studies 321
Video Tapes and DVDs 321
Comprehensive Methods for Drum Set Study 322
Supplemental Studies for Comprehensive Study 323
Methods for Styles Awareness, Chart Reading, and Interpretation 324
Supplemental Studies for Styles Awareness, Chart Reading,
and Interpretation 325
Afro-Cuban and Brazilian Styles 325
Brush Methods 326
Methods for Movement Around the Drums 326
Supplemental Studies for Movement Around the Drums 326
Multiple-Percussion Drum Set Solos 327
Notes 328
CHA PTER 9 Marching Percussion 329

History and Evolution 329
Developing the Contemporary Marching Percussion Section 332
Instruments and Equipment 332
Bass Drums 332
Snare Drum 336
Tenors or Multi-Tom Toms 340
Cymbals 342
The Front Ensemble or Pit 342
Training the Marching Percussionist 344
The System 344
Marching 344
Timing Training 345
Rehearsal Techniques and Philosophy 346
The Stroke Awareness Approach 347
The Stroke Awareness System 349
The Basic Grips, Strokes, and Dynamic Levels 350
Developing a Warm-Up Routine 351
Developing Uniform Drumming Skills 362
Visuals 375
Rudimental Drumming 377
Scoring and Arranging for Marching Percussion 393
Field Placement and Projection 403
The Challenge 405
Marching Percussion Arrangements for the Methods Class 406
Marching Percussion Methods and Materials 420
Major Complete Methods for Individual and Ensemble Study 421
Supplemental Studies for the Individual and Full Ensemble 422
Warm-Ups and Cadences for the Full Ensemble 423
Percussion Features 423
Contemporary Rudimental Solos, Books, and Videos 424
Selected Traditional Rudimental Solos and Books and Videos 424
Notes 424
D et a i l ed C o nt ent s xi
CH APTER 10 Musical Interpretation of Percussion Parts 425

Interpretive Commentary on the Percussion Writing
b
in Gustav Holst’s First Suite in E for Military Band 426
Notes 453
CH APTER 11 Supplemental Playing Exercises 454

Basic Stroke Combinations 454
Buzz Comparisons 455
Tied Rolls 457
Nontied Rolls 457
Double Stroke and Rebound Control 459
Finger Control Exercises 459
Sticking Policy Exercises 460
Keyboard Exercises 463
Supplemental Percussion Ensemble African Creation by
Dr. Jeannine Remy 470
APPENDIX A Orchestral Excerpts for Percussion and Discography

of Percussion Music 471
APPENDIX B Select Percussion Solo and Ensemble Music 481
Glossary of Foreign Terms 507
Bibliography 510
Index 514
VIDE O T RA CKS
CHAPTER 1 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND PREREQUSITES 3. Suspended Cymbals (02:50:01)

4. Cymbal Etude (01:49:18)
1. Classification of Instruments (9:12:14) 5. Triangle (03:57:00)
2. Tone Production (3:31:37) 6. Tambourine (05:00:04)
3. Electrophones and Their Applications (15:42) 7. Tambourine Triangle Duet (01:02:11)
8. Castanets (02:39:17)
CH APTE R 2 BASIC PERCUSSION TECHNIQUE THROUGH
THE STUDY OF THE SNARE DRUM CH APTE R 7 PERCUSSION INSTRUMENTS OF THE WORLD
1. Introduction (03:12:08) 1. Kinka (05:05:26)

2. Pivot Point (00:30:16) 2. Djembe (01:39:04)
3. Lady Bug (01:15:02) 3. Kpanlogo (05:14:16)
4. Grip (00:48:21) 4. Afro-Cuban Instruments (11:27:42)
5. Stroke (00:55:22) 5. Afro-Cuban Groove (01:09:19)
6. Alternating Strokes (00:55:15) 6. Brazilian Instruments (04:00:09)
7. Integrating Arms (03:53:27) 7. Samba Batucada (01:56:08)
8. Double and Triple Strokes (02:13:07) 8. Middle Eastern Instruments (06:28:21)
9. Cloning Triplets (00:37:11) 9. Bodhram (01:19:09)
10. Spray of Notes (01:04:29) 10. Global Drumming (01:33:21)
11. Accents (01:26:27) 11. Groove Tune #1 (03:26:26)
12. Buzz/Multi-Bounce (01:16:29) 12. Groove Tune #2 (04:17:04)
13. Base to Rolls (00:40:04) 13. Tabla (04:30:00)
14. Stroke-and-a-Bounce (01:48:15) 14. Steel Band (04:57:03)
15. Flams (02:52:05)
16. Sticking Policy (01:17:23) CH APTE R 8 DRUM SET
17. Phrasing (01:44:07)
18. Etude #1 (01:00:24) 1. Electronic Drums (05:09:29)
19. Etude #2 (00:51:23) 2. Bass Drum (03:16:15)
3. High Hat (02:34:04)
CH APTE R 3 MULTIPLE PERCUSSION (no videos) 4. Ride Cymbal (04:11:20)
5. Independence and Comping (01:44:06)
CH APTE R 4 KEYBOARD PERCUSSION 6. Moving Around the Drums (02:42:05)
7. Example 8-D, Chart Reading (01:16:17)
1. Instrument Characteristics (16:19:13) 8. Playing with Brushes (02:55:10)
2. Basic Keyboard Technique (08:12:10) 9. Example 8-E, Basic Styles (04:36:21)
3. Rolls (03:15:24) 10. Time for a Change (00:45:05)
4. Reading (02:17:06) 11. Crimson Glow (00:47:16)
5. Four Mallet Grips (07:31:22)
CH APTE R 9 MARCHING PERCUSSION
6. Four Mallet Strokes (10:48:06)
CH APTE R 5 TIMPANI 1. Heritage of Drums (01:32:04)

2. H.S. Front Ensemble, Bizet, Farandole (02:36:24)
1. Head Covers and Mallets (02:01:25) Coronado del Sol High School, Tempe, Arizona
2. Clearing Heads (03:18:24) 3. Marching Demo (01:42:09)
3. Tuning a Pitch (00:59:01) 4. Snare Drum (13:06:14)
4. Instrument Set Up (00:42:18) 5. Tenors (13:19:03)
5. Ear Training (04:11:01) 6. Visuals (02:54:04)
6. Performance Tuning (02:17:26) 7. Bass Drum (05:50:28)
7. Basic Grip and Playing Spot (01:57:06) 8. Cymbals (11:37:09)
8. Basic Stroke (03:01:11) 9. Arranging (04:08:04)
9. Articulation (05:39:25) 10. Drum Feature (01:36:17)
10. Finger Strokes and Rolls (03:25:16)
(7:34:20) TOTAL TIME
11. Forearm Technique (04:39:04)
12. Forte-Piano Rolls (01:21:04) CH APTE R 10 MUSICAL INTERPRETATION OF PERCUSSION
13. Muffling (00:42:25) PARTS (no videos)
14. Muting (01:36:02)
15. Cross Sticking (04:23:09)
16. Final Etudes (04:21:08) CH APTE R 11 SUPPLEMENTAL PLAYING EXERCISES
(no videos)
CH APTE R 6 BASS DRUM, CYMBALS, AND ACCESSORIES
1. Bass Drum (03:42:02)

2. Hand Cymbals (09:14:04)
p r e f a ce
3rd Edition of Teaching Percussion has been expanded to

T
his Enhanced
include current resources for study and extensive new content, particularly
under the “History and Evolution of Percussion and Pedagogy,” presented in
Cengage’s innovative MindTap digital platform and in eBook format. This new content
will provide comprehensive information in a single resource for music educators, as did
previous editions. This edition is intended to be invaluable to university and college
instructors teaching percussion pedagogy, literature, or history courses, as well as to
graduate students preparing for written and oral exams.
New MindTap features for this edition include:
●● video track numbers that are closely referenced throughout each chapter for
a clearer understanding of the playing examples and concepts.
●● chapter Previews that present Video Activities and Learning Objectives out-
lining core learning concepts.
●● new YouTube videos, websites, and other online resources that are linked to
the MindTap sections.
●● Bonus Study features throughout each chapter that designate references to
websites, articles, and other downloadable sources for use by college instruc-
tors and graduate students for further in-depth study beyond the text.
●● Timelines in most chapters that present historical material that is referenced
and cross-referenced throughout the book and expanded in other chapters.
●● new “History and Evolution of Percussion and Pedagogy” sections in most
chapters that detail the events in the Timelines and trace the origin, history,
and evolution of instruments, composers and their compositions, inven-
tions, and events all contributing to the evolution of percussion—including
the genesis of the percussion ensemble, the establishment of educational
programs, the formation of professional percussion ensembles, and signifi-
cant pedagogical developments and schools.
●● Chapter Quizzes at the end of each chapter that will help the reader and
instructors evaluate these new learnings.
Since the publication of the first edition in 1988, Teaching Percussion has been used
throughout the world. My goal with the revisions and updates to the second edition,
published in 1997, was to make it a better book; in fact, it is still commonly referred to by
instructors and students as “The Cook Book.” The third edition, published in 2006, was
a result of thoughtful input from reviewers, colleagues, and students—as well as my
own desire for further refinements in the book—plus the publisher’s support and eager-
ness to issue accompanying DVDs with that edition.
This Enhanced 3rd Edition contains all the original features of the 2006 third edition,
but it is now available as an eBook, with all the videos online in Cengage’s amazing,
interactive MindTap digital platform. Those original features include: additional play-
ing exercises to provide more hands-on classroom experience for students; expanded
emphasis on percussion of the world, marching percussion, drum set, and new applica-
tions of technology, including Internet and updated resources; and further refinements
in experiential teaching and learning integrated with new scientific developments in
understanding motor control learning. This Enhanced 3rd Edition continues to be a book
on pedagogy––on how learning (to better facilitate it) takes place, especially through
xiii
xiv Pre face
experiential awareness. This understanding is based on the premise that learning occurs
not so much by trying hard to accomplish something, but by becoming more aware of
the activity (for example, the stroke, motion, or movement) and paying attention to all
aspects of the activity (the sound, look, and feel of it) to allow learning to take place
in a natural and expedient manner. In this sense, Teaching Percussion continues to be
about developing habits—habits that become one’s whole approach to playing (for exam-
ple, the habit of acquiring a concept of sound on every instrument and then developing
that concept, the habit of playing with a relaxed technique, the habit of discovering and
expressing musical ideas, and the habit of efficient practicing that results in satisfying
performances). Practice efficacy is examined from the premise of defining the “essential
ingredients” that are needed to develop skills, understanding, and musicality in percus-
sion performance, and not from spending time practicing things that have little payoff
or results. Expedient practice habits are essential, because there is now so much competi-
tion for percussionists’ time. New techniques are demonstrated in the online videos and
presented throughout the text, and are learned more efficiently by utilizing the power
of “cloning” and “triple-channel experiential learning.” Most importantly, the essential
ingredients presented throughout Teaching Percussion become “The Cook Book” recipes
for maximizing and enjoying the whole learning experience and for developing percus-
sionists into sensitive musicians … who just happen to be percussionists.
The online videos continue the focus on the essential playing ingredients in each
chapter and go beyond the textbook with demonstrations and concepts. This gives stu-
dents greater goal clarity when playing the many exercises and developing hands-on
understanding of the concepts and playing systems. The online videos, as before, expand
the marching percussion, world percussion, and drum set chapters, and a new video
by Drew Lang demonstrates some of today’s on-the-job applications of electronic per-
cussion. All this is integrated through instant links in MindTap to YouTube, websites,
and other resources to illustrate even further each chapter’s concepts. By focusing on the
essential ingredients in each area of study, progress through the material, particularly in
the college methods class, should prove more efficient and timely. The book and videos
should be more valuable on-the-job references to music educators than ever before.
The first edition of Teaching Percussion was written at a time when scientists, human-
ists, and psychologists were just beginning to team up with music educators to try to
understand further the dimensions of learning and performing music. The learning of
musical skills (indeed, of many human activities) has continually been recognized as a
process that involves a person not merely in an individual mind-body system inside his
or her skin, but within the context of the total environment. The total external environ-
ment of any person is the universe. The total internal environment of the person is both
conscious and unconscious—anatomy, physiology, chemistry, and genetics, as well as
the internalized socialization process that includes one’s language, behaviors, concepts,
beliefs, disbeliefs, experiences, and education. This approach to the learning and per-
formance of music then involves acknowledgement, realization, and consideration of
as many mind-body internal and external environmental interrelationships as one’s
knowledge, experience, and sensitivity allow.
In Mind, Muscle, and Music, Dr. Frank R. Wilson (a semi-retired neurologist by profes-
sion—and author of books on music and the brain and the hand—but an amateur pianist
by avocation) presents the major premise of his work when he states, “a close examination
of the ‘tried and true’ principles of music teaching shows them to be compatible with what
we are now discovering to be the operating characteristics of the human brain and neu-
romuscular system. Whether or not they actually understand the underlying physiologic
or psychologic principles, good teachers have found didactic techniques which optimize
the natural learning systems built into the human brain.” He continues by stating that he
“can’t help believing that a wider appreciation [and understanding] of the operating char-
acteristics of the nervous system will help make teaching systematically better.”1
Wilson goes on to explain how the cerebellum processes repetitive activity in the
muscular system until it is automatic, and how this process is adversely affected by
P r ef a c e xv
practicing too fast for accuracy––certainly not a novel idea to any good teacher’s didactic
techniques, but a new explanation of our tried and true principles. He expounds on the
benefits of mental preparation and visualization, and likens a musician’s mental prac-
tice to that of a serious athlete. He states that visualization techniques have helped ath-
letes “improve their limits and to discover small technical errors that adversely affect
performance.” Wilson concludes by saying “these techniques work not simply because
they help performers cope with stress and [performance] anxiety, but because they facil-
itate programming the cerebellum.”2
Recent scientific discoveries in brain plasticity research and refined emperical meth-
ods to help teachers and performers better understand the processes of learning and per-
forming music are presented throughout this Enhanced 3rd Edition of Teaching Percussion.
Refinements made by Jon Gorrie (author of Playing in the Zone, 2009) to Tim Gallwey’s
Inner Game concepts are discussed in the Introduction, and Gorrie expands Gallwey’s
thinking to a new level. Research synthesis presented by Po Bronson and Ashley Merry-
man in Top Dog, The Science of Wining and Losing (2013) informs us of new and cumulative
research findings based on brain scan studies of electrical and chemical reactions in the
brain and hormonal reactions through saliva samples that support, as well as contradict,
many postulated beliefs from the past. These new findings are examined and connections
made in the new MindTap sections. For example, Gorrie’s perspective that appropriate lev-
els of performance arousal help us perform our best is supported by the Individual Zone
of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) research expounded by Russian psychologist Yuri Hanin
in 2003. Hanin’s research basically defined a level of anxiousness that is beneficial to an
individual’s performance. A critical understanding from this research is that having per-
formance arousal is ok; what is critical is how we perceive and interpret stress as a threat
situation or a challenge situation that triggers performance arousal to an appropriate (or
inappropriate) level that, in turn, affects optimal functioning.
Several parallel research findings debating the “10,000-hours rule” of practice to
become an expert––that was started in 1993 with the research of Anders Ericsson, et al.,
with subsequent conclusions by Malcolm Gladwell (and others) in his book Outliers––
have shed new light on the validity of the claim. A meta-analysis, in 2014, of 88 scientific
articles representing some 11,000 research participants contested Gladwell conclusions.
Ericsson, in his 2016 discourse PEAK: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, refutes the
10,000-hours rule, proclaiming that it does not warrant expert performance but, more so,
reveals that deliberate practice, as he terms it, is indeed a key to expertise, regardless of how
long training takes. Ericsson’s deliberate practice criteria involve dedicated and focused
purposeful practice, with well-defined goals, and a plan for achieving them defined by
a highly competent teacher. (See: http://www.businessinsider.com/anders-ericsson
-how-to-become-an-expert-at-anything-2016-6). However, the critical result of delibera-
tive practice is a new interpretation of a mid-19th century scientific discovery that shows
deliberate practice builds a neural insulator called myelin around nerve fibers, and myelin
is the key to expertise. This realization is expounded by Daniel Coyle in his book The Tal-
ent Code, and elements of Coyle’s deep practice (as he terms it), which “fires our neural
circuits in such a way that our meylin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around
the neural circuits to improve performance,” are integrated into the pedagogy of Teach-
ing Percussion and presented through the new MindTap links. As an example, view the
TEDx Talk “How to Practice Effectively” given by Annie Bosler and Don Greene (author
of Performance Success: Performing Your Best Under Pressure; see Recommended Reading at
the end of the Introduction) on the quality and effeciveness of practice that results in the
myelination of neural pathways.
View this YouTube video of a 2017 TED-Ed Talk, “How to practice effectively…
for just about anything” given by Annie Bosler and Don Greene on the quality
and effectiveness of practice that results in the myelination of neural pathways:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O6mQkFiiw
xvi Pre face
In the final chapter to his book Tone Deaf and All Thumbs?: An Invitation to Music-
Making for Late Bloomers and Non-Prodigies, Dr. Wilson reflects on the intrinsic value of
music study as something rewarding in itself and akin to “a fundamental tenet of Zen
thought, which holds that one studies flower arranging or archery, or motorcycle mainte-
nance, for only one reason: to achieve detachment through self-mastery.” He further states,
Perhaps this formulation is as good a bridge to the deeper levels of musical meaning, and
the value of music as a discipline, as can be found. It allows us to see that the spiritual, cere-
bral and physical aspects of music are not only unopposed but in fact mutually dependent.
And, to be very practical, it gives us a solid foundation on which to anchor our interest in
music-making, and from which to build a long-range, workable plan for both success and
satisfaction.3
In the conclusion to his book The Inner Game of Golf, one of several he has written
addressing the mental aspects of playing a sport, author Tim Gallwey states that sports
could become “the laboratory in which research and experimentation about human
motivation, performance, and self-interference take place.” He remarks,
it will no longer be sufficient for a teacher of the game to be a good player and know the
mechanics of the swing. Forward looking teachers will attempt to develop an understanding
of the learning process. If they do, they will be more valued than in their old role as swing
mechanics for they will be teaching such valuable inner skills as concentration, self-trust,
will, and awareness…the best of them will be held in the same esteem as the Zen masters of
Japan who taught judo, akido, archery, and even flower arranging—not just as skills useful
in themselves, but as vehicles for learning self-control. Such teachers will be recognized as
making valuable contributions to the quality of a student’s entire life.4
It is my hope that the ideas presented in Teaching Percussion concerning both percus-
sion techniques and learning theories will prove provocative to the reader and foster
further exploration of their substance. Indeed, the art of music is, like Gallwey’s sports,
a perfect “laboratory in which research and experimentation about human motivation,
performance, and self-interference take place.” To evolve beyond and transcend our
“old role as swing mechanics” is one of the greatest, if perhaps not the greatest, chal-
lenge and purpose in our profession and life.
As stated in the Preface to the first edition three decades ago, Teaching Percussion,
“when used as a primary text in college percussion methods/techniques classes and
as an on-the-job guide book or manual by music educators, will contribute greatly to
the continued elevation of standards and expectations for percussion performance and
education in the school music program.”5 Indeed, those standards and expectations have
risen as a result of many contributions: the increasing demands of performance literature
and new arenas––like PAS, DCI, WGI, and BOA––and the greater refinement and under-
standing of our pedagogy by teachers and students, which have resulted in a general
heightening of skill levels and musicianship in players of all ages and in all situations.
These manifested higher skill levels, although labeled many things in today’s society—
—“artistic excellence,” “realized potential,” and so on––can simply be called progress for
the most part. Indeed, this progress is a result of meeting the challenge of these elevated
standards and expectations with better-informed and refined high-quality teaching. And
this progress is a natural evolution for informed, aware musicians, much like the way
Dave Weckl titled his 2003 DVD “Natural Evolution,” in which he extols the benefits of a
more relaxed, free rebound approach to drumming over the more mechanical, technical
previous approach he had used for years.6 As more teachers and students recognize and
experience this quality of instruction and education, they will be better able to evolve
beyond being “swing mechanics,” and greater progress of even a higher level and qual-
ity will be made. It is my sincere intention that this Enhanced 3rd Edition of Teaching Percus-
sion is a further refinement and continuing contribution toward that progress.
Gary Cook
Tucson, Arizona
P r ef a c e xvii
■ NOTES 4. W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Golf (New York:

Random House, 1981), p. 205.
1. Frank R. Wilson, Mind, Muscle, and Music: Physiological Clues to 5. Gary Cook, Teaching Percussion (New York: Schirmer, 1988),
Better Teaching (Elkhart, IN: The Selmer Company, 1981), p. 14. p. xv.
2. Ibid., p. 15. 6. Dave Weckl, “Natural Evolution” DVD (New York: Carl
3. Frank R. Wilson, Tone Deaf and All Thumbs? (New York: Fischer, 2003).
Viking-Penguin, 1986), pp. 193–194.
■ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The three editions of Teaching Percussion have spanned three decades, from the first edi-
tion in 1988, the second in 1997, the third in 2006, and now this Enhanced 3rd Edition in
2018. An attempt at acknowledging and thanking everyone who contributed to their
creation would be ineffectual. However, none of these editions could have been pos-
sible without the support, understanding, and love of my family: My wife, Kirsten; our
daughters, Tamara and Tekla, and their families; and my parents. Their years of patience
with me writing Teaching Percussion is truly amazing!
The many friends, colleagues, mentors, and editors who made the first two editions
possible are beyond listing, but without their contributions the third editions would never
have evolved. Some of those wonderful people are my teachers and mentors Salvatore Rab-
bio, Tele Lesbines, Cloyd Duff, and James D. Salmon, who helped me beyond the mechanics
of the swing; Paul Buyer, Dave Walton, and Susan Martin and other contributing authors
along the way; Sandy Goldthorpe, Jim Shea, Steve Crofts, and others who helped create
those editions; the many publishers and manufacturers who supported those editions with
permissions and images; and my editors who believed in all these editions.
The seed for the original 2006 third edition was planted when Clark Baxter, Pub-
lisher at Thomson/Schirmer Books, asked me if I would like to write it. My response was,
“Only if we can do it with a DVD,” and he enthusiastically agreed. I am eternally grate-
ful to the team of editors and tech support people at Thomson/Schirmer who helped to
nurture the manuscript and produce the original 2006 third edition: Julie Yardley, Jen-
nifer Gordon, Robin Hood, Joohee Lee, Diane Wenckebach, and Trudy Brown, as well
as Matt Dorsey, for his help and patience with the videos. Creating the seven-and-a-half
hours of accompanying videos was an amazing process that took just less than a year,
and videographer Carlos Terrazas is equally amazing. To Carlos and the video support
folks, my deepest appreciation (please read the video credits for all those names). The
videos wouldn’t be what they are without the incredible contributions of Aaron Hol-
brook’s camera work and of Scott Werner and the Corona del Sol High School marching
band front ensemble for the marching percussion in Chapter 9. I can never thank Aaron
or Scott and his wonderful students enough for making the third edition a better book.
Creating the original 2006 third edition and its accompanying videos with the com-
prehensiveness and quality that I envisioned was beyond my expertise. So, in order to
meet my expectations and standards, I engaged colleagues as contributing authors who
truly went beyond my dreams. The contributions of Robin Horn to the drum set chap-
ter and to the performances on the entire Chapter 8 video are matchless; the expertise
of Mike Vercelli and Todd Hammes in the greatly expanded world percussion chap-
ter (Chapter 7) is inspiring and, hopefully, provocative to readers; the wisdom of Dave
Rodenkirch emerges in several chapters, but his text and music, along with Joe Gallegos’
writing and Jeff Moore’s arrangements, make the marching percussion chapter (Chap-
ter 9) unique and very special; and Scott Deal’s expertise in electronic musical instru-
ments and cutting-edge thinking bring greater relevance and clarity to the application
of technology to percussion education and performance than ever before. Jay Rees, then
Associate Professor of Music and my University of Arizona (UA) colleague, can never
be thanked enough for his cooperation with the Pride of Arizona marching band, his
arranging genius with the Talking Heads show, and his inspiration creating Rub the
Buddha. Jay is now Professor of Music and Director of Athletic Bands at the University
of Miami. Mike Sammon’s arrangement of Buddha and brilliance with the steel band
xviii Pre face
brought perfect synchronicity to everything we needed for the steel band segments.
Special thanks goes to Jeannine Remy for giving pan a special place in my life and for
her African Creation percussion ensemble as the perfect experiential learning tool for
the third edition. And a special thanks to all the members of the 2004 Pride of Arizona
marching band, UA Steel, the Corona del Sol High School front ensemble from Tempe,
Arizona, and the world percussion and Groove Tunes groups, who donated their time
and talents to making the videos unequivocally one-of-a-kind.
My deepest appreciation is expressed to the manufacturers and publishers, whose
contributions of photos and permissions made the illustrations clearer and more inter-
esting—especially Matthew S. King for his all-encompassing cover photo of Guatema-
lan marimba mallets and Vallabh Kargathra for the photo of Pandit Sharda Sahai; Steve
Hearn at Pearl Corporation and Nick Petrella at SABIAN Cymbals (and for Nick’s insis-
tence that we “go with DVDs!”); my dear friend Al Payson for his support and permis-
sions; and Boosey & Hawkes. Jim Casella’s offer to provide mp3 files of Jeff Moore’s
arrangements compliments of Tap Space Publications with Virtual Drumline: 2 sound
samples on the Teaching Percussion website for Chapter 9 created added value to the
third edition, for which I am most appreciative—as I think will be the readers.
And then there are the “students”––or people, most of whom just happen to
be enrolled at the UA––who contributed in so many ways to make the third edition
revolutionary. To those who rose beyond the challenge of teaching percussion on the
DVD—especially Debbie Lewis and Lauren Spencer for their beautiful marching cym-
bals playing and commentary; and Vicente Lopez, Saul Aguilar, Bob Peterson, Bryce
Dunbar, Stephanie Thompson, and Chris Newman for their battery demonstrations and
commentary—thank you for being absolutely amazing and taking Chapter 9 beyond
my dreams! It is to people like you and all my past students and future readers that the
2006 third edition of Teaching Percussion was dedicated. Thank you for being the next
generation of progress.
In November of 2015, as I was attempting to contact my publisher, Clark Baxter,
I discovered Clark had retired from Cengage Learning. Sharon Poore was the new
Product Manager, Art & Music at Cengage; we began correspondence about creating
an Enhanced 3rd Edition of Teaching Percussion in Cengage’s MindTap digital platform. A
production team was assembled, with Julia Giannotti as Project Manager joining Sharon
Poore in Boston, and Chrystie Hopkins as Content Development Project Manager with
Lumina Datamatics. Three other professionals joined that team in April 2017: Lianne
Ames, Senior Content Project Manager, Higher Education Production Cengage Learn-
ing; Charu Verma, Senior Project Manager with MPS Ltd. digital publishing; along with
copyeditor Joan Templeton.
A special thank you is extended to my colleague Drew Lang for sharing his exper-
tise on using electronic percussion and technology in education in chapter 1 with his
video and his contributions to chapter 8. As a working percussionist who regularly uses
technology on the gig playing shows and musicals, and well as opera, Drew’s perspec-
tives have made the Enhanced 3rd Edition a better book.
A final thank you goes out to two of my colleagues: Dr. Steve Hemphill, Director of Per-
cussion at Northern Arizona University and Kyle Bissantz, Assistant Director of Bands and
Director of Percussion at Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas. I asked Steve for “real
life” questions he uses in his methods classes at NAU and he complied, many of which
served as incentive for this Enhanced 3rd Edition chapter quiz questions. Kyle provided
drumline and front ensemble videos that concluded the chapter 9 MindTap perfectly.
My deepest appreciation goes out to Steve, Drew, Kyle, and the entire production
team at Cengage for their support and creative thinking, which has made this Enhanced
3rd Edition of Teaching Percussion a reality and the comprehensive resource it is today.
int r o d u cti o n
e a c h i n g P e r c u s s i o n is a comprehensive textbook, with accompany-
T ing videos and a digital teaching and learning solution called MindTap. Both
the textbook and MindTap are designed primarily for use in training the future
music educator who is in the college percussion methods and technique class. All aspects
of percussion education, performance, and pedagogy are presented in great detail.
The music educator will find this text to be an invaluable on-the-job reference source
when used as an accompanying instructional guide with any of the several instrumental
method courses for band or orchestra, or when used with any fine percussion method
for private or class study. The emphasis on learning and playing philosophies, as well
as its enhanced contents, make it suitable for use in college pedagogy, history or litera-
ture courses, and in private instruction.
The contents of Teaching Percussion represent a synthesis of many successful
approaches to percussion performance and education that have been tested, edited,
refined, and improved over the years. New techniques and developments in pedagogy
have been integrated into the book and videos, which offer the teacher and student a
wealth of eclectic insights into all music learning and performance. It is my hope that
these insights will stimulate the curiosity of the teacher and student toward further
examining the processes involved in the acquisition of musical skills and the intrinsic
value of these processes themselves.
The playing philosophies, schools, or systems presented in Teaching Percussion are
derived from the teachings and playing concepts of the greatest artists and pedagogues
in the percussion profession, from an informed historical perspective. The approach to all
“drumming” presented herein is rooted in a free rebound playing system, as expounded
by George Lawrence Stone, Billy Gladstone, and Sanford “Gus” Moeller and furthered by
Fred Hinger, Buster Bailey, Jim Chapin, Joe Morello, Dave Weckl, Freddie Gruber, Dom
Famularo, William James, and many others, including numerous drum set artists. The
approach to keyboard percussion is founded in the playing principles first expressed by
the great George Hamilton Green and later by Bob Becker, Buster Bailey, Gene Koshinski,
and others and expanded by Gary Burton, Keiko Abe, Leigh Howard Stevens, Gordon
Stout, William Moersch, Michael Burritt, Nancy Zeltsman, Mark Ford, Pius Cheung, and
many others to include four-mallet performance. Some of the approaches to cymbal play-
ing were originally formulated and practiced by Sam Denov, Charles Owen, Fred Hinger,
Al Payson, and other symphonic players. The approach to timpani performance is a syn-
thesis of systems expounded by Fred Hinger, Richard Hochrainer, and Saul Goodman
and greatly influenced and inspired by my mentors Salvatore Rabbio, Tele Lesbines, and
Cloyd Duff. Similarly, techniques of other performance areas are based on the concepts
exhibited by the profession’s most respected artists and teachers. I have had the good for-
tune of being able to distill these concepts, add many of my own, and refine them all with
an extraordinary group of students over four decades of teaching and in three editions of
Teaching Percussion. The application of these concepts and approaches has produced prac-
tical and musical results over many years, and will greatly aid the percussion student and
teacher in achieving musical percussion performance and education.
Over the years, Teaching Percussion has been a significant contribution to percussion
pedagogy––a continually evolving, refining body of literature and concepts within the
constantly expanding art of percussion. The unique aspect of each edition of Teaching Per-
cussion, as stated in the original Introduction, remains its presentation of a consistent basic
xix
xx In tro du ctio n
percussion technique or playing philosophy throughout the text. This is integrated with
current scientific knowledge on motor skills learning and a refined contemporary approach
to teaching that is based on understanding natural human learning potentials and experien-
tial awareness learning. The following comments about this experiential learning approach
are offered with the intent of clarifying the concepts and encouraging their application.
Experiential learning is a natural process through which people acquire new skills
and knowledge. Think for a moment of how a child learns the complexities of walking,
eating with a spoon, riding a bike, roller skating, and even talking. When a child learns to
walk, no volume of instructions is given by the parent about “how” to put one foot ahead
of the other, alter balance, and distribute weight in order to avoid falling. The child learns
virtually without language instructions, through an awareness of his or her own experi-
ence. The learning comes not from the doing of the task itself or from trying hard to walk,
but from the body experiencing and the central nervous system registering what happens
when the attempt to walk is made. The body naturally learns when an awareness of the
experience is registered in the psychophysical system of the child. In this sense, walking is
learned by “trial and learning” not by “trial and error.” The child learns naturally, and the
body never forgets how to walk. Unfortunately, as the child grows older and experiences
traditional education, a large amount of natural learning potential and psychophysical
integrity is interfered with, or worse, as John Holt states in How Children Fail:
It is destroyed, and more than by any other one thing, by the process we misname education—
a process that goes on in most homes and schools. We adults destroy most of the intellectual
and creative capacity of children by the things we do to them or make them do. We destroy this
capacity above all by making them afraid, afraid of not doing what other people want, of not
pleasing, of making mistakes, of failing, of being wrong.1
The past decades have seen an increasing awareness and understanding of natural
human learning capabilities. This understanding has been applied to the learning and
improvement of many human activities, including sports, human relations in business,
health, and teaching, and performance skills in music. Learning and playing music can be
summed up as a two-part process: 1. the acquisition or learning of motor skills and music,
and 2. the act of then calling on those acquired skills in performance with minimal men-
tal or physical interference to achieve a high quality and satisfying musical performance
of the music. The actual learning of any physical activity, and the approach for teaching
percussion encouraged throughout this book and on the videos, is based on the principle
that change and learning take place in the most expedient, natural, and permanent way
when we increase our awareness of “what is” and “what is happening” while engaged in
an activity, and not by just “trying hard” to gain certain end results by “doing” the activ-
ity. While the importance of having clear learning objectives or goals is a given, strong
results-oriented, or end-gaining, judgmental expectations that accompany “trying hard”
usually interfere with one’s psychophysical balance, which in turn reduces one’s capacity
for learning and performing. Combining triple-channel and cloning methods of teaching
with experiential learning concepts can greatly increase one’s awareness of the activity one
is engaged in and thus enhance learning. Or, as Tim Gallwey so eloquently states, “Learn-
ing and change occur when there is an increased awareness of what is.” The following will
further acquaint the teacher (and learner) with the methodology of using triple-channel
and cloning methods to facilitate learning through experiential awareness.
W. Timothy Gallwey, the celebrated sports guru, expresses a very useful formula for
examining this learning and performance process in his Inner Game books on sports, which
have been easily adapted to music since their first appearance in the mid-1970s. (Gallwey
teamed up with bassist Barry Green in the 1980s to apply Inner Game methodologies to
music in their co-authored book The Inner Game of Music [1986], and Green subsequently
produced a video and several workbooks; see Recommended Reading at the end of the
Introduction.) Gallwey’s formula of P 5 p 2 i translates simply: one’s “Performance” (P)
is equal to one’s “potential” (p) minus “interference” (i). A working example of this equa-
tion could be illustrated by the scenario in which a performer has prepared a piece of
I nt r o d uc t i o n xxi
music in the practice room to 100 percent of its potential, yet when performing in front of
an audience, mental interference of 20 percent reduces the full potential to a performance
of only 80 percent of the performer’s potential. (P 5 p 2 i: 80% 5 100% 2 20%)
Many factors influence each component of this equation and there are numerous
combinations possible. For now, the focus is on building the small “p” potential com-
ponent to an optimum level through understanding what Michael Colgrass first called
“triple-channel learning,” and through the use of “cloning” as presented throughout
Teaching Percussion.
Simply stated, a person learns a musical skill through visual, auditory, and kin-
esthetic channels. In other words, we learn by seeing, hearing, and feeling. While our
olfactory sense (smell) and gustatory sense (taste) play important roles in learning to
make a soufflé, a tasty salad, or another recipe, they are less involved in learning musi-
cal skills. (Yet, the benefits derived from burning incense and other sensory enhancers
should not be overlooked.)
Triple-channel learning simply refers to acknowledging and consciously programming
any skill that is to be learned equally through each of these three channels. While it might
seem that this, of course, takes place in good teaching and through good practice habits, the
fact remains that most people favor a preferred learning strategy that rarely equally utilizes
a balance of all three senses. Drumming, in particular, is greatly referred to as a kinesthetic
experience and, indeed, many drummers and percussionists tend to acquire their skills and
learn their parts primarily through their kinesthetic channel (often coupled with their audi-
tory channel). An instrumentalist talks of “having the notes in my hands” (or of “not hav-
ing the notes under my hands ... yet”). Indeed, a great drummer is one who plays with a
good “feel,” or “lays down” a nice “groove” and has a nice “touch” on the instruments—all
of which are kinesthetic or feeling-related descriptive terms in themselves.
The acquisition of a musical skill or the learning of a piece of music through a bal-
ance of these three senses, in contrast to learning primarily through one or two senses,
can improve one’s small “p” potential and enhance one’s performance. All one has to do
is consciously pay attention to as much of the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic feedback
as possible while learning the skill or the piece.
Take, for example, a beginning drummer learning to play a free rebounding stroke off
a drum. The intent is to play the stick so as to allow for a free, uninhibited, natural rebound
off the drum. The drummer is usually instructed, in some manner, to play and allow the
stick to freely rebound off the head. The player usually observes this process from his or her
vantage point and sometimes in a mirror or on video. (Effective teaching involves having
the student imitate the teacher’s demonstration of a free rebounding stroke and likening it
to bouncing a ball. The analogy of bouncing a ball to making a basic percussion stroke estab-
lishes sensitivity and timing, and coordinates sensations in the body directly related to the
free rebound of the stick off a drum head. Plus, more importantly, it is easy and fun to do.)
While visual feedback (that is, watching this stroking process) may suffice in develop-
ing the basic rebounding stroke, other forms of feedback (for example, auditory and kin-
esthetic) can further enhance the learning. By calling the drummer’s attention to the drum
tone when a free rebounding stroke is played with a relaxed grip (the key to a free rebound),
as compared to an inhibited rebounding stroke played with a tighter grip that stops the
rebound, the student will begin to process different and new information about the stroke.
(A resonant drum provides much greater auditory feedback than a pad for this learning.)
Further learning can be gained by listening for the pitch of the stick vibrating freely in the
hand when the stroke is played, as opposed to little or no pitch heard from the restricted
vibrations of a stick played with too tight a grip. (Furthermore, playing on a pad or even on
the floor enables one to hear the stick pitch feedback even more than on a ringing drum.)
Listening to stick pitch leads nicely into overlapping learning strategies by calling
the student’s attention to the feel of the stick vibrating in the hand. Stick vibrations can be
detected on either a pad or a drum, and experimentation with aluminum or fiberglass
sticks for this kind of learning feedback can result in interesting combinations. Asking
the student to close his or her eyes and feel the stick vibrations shuts off the sometimes
xxii In tro du ctio n
distracting, and often unconscious, visual watching of the stroke and enhances the kines-
thetic (and auditory) feedback. Exploring the stick vibrations on each finger and in every
part of the hand furthers learning. Feeling the wrist motion (as it is likened to bouncing a
ball) and paying attention to the feeling of the stroke and to the way the sound of the drum
and the pitch of the stick change with slight alterations in grip greatly enhance the subtleties
that accompany a free rebounding stroke and ultimately advance learning and stick control.
Triple-channel learning can be further enhanced through cloning—simply playing
both hands at the same time in the same motion or stroke, and even “ghosting” or “air-
drumming” one stroke as the other stick plays. (See videos in Chapter 2 that demonstrate
cloning and ghosting.) The power in cloning comes from the non-dominant hand learn-
ing a myriad of details about the skill from the dominant hand (beyond what could be
consciously analyzed and explained by the teacher) when the hands are played together
or ghosting strokes are played—more than is possible through playing or practicing the
hands separately. Practice time is better utilized and learning is more expeditious. Also,
attributes of the weaker hand sometimes benefit the stronger hand! Cloning can be used
at every level, from learning beginning stokes on any instrument to developing advanced
techniques, as demonstrated on the videos in each chapter of Teaching Percussion. Scien-
tific research into this phenomenon––called cross education, contra-lateral transfer, or bi-
lateral movement control––suggests that this process involves brain symmetry and both
generalizabilty of motor learning and proposed anatomical connections through the cor-
pus callosum. While continuing research corroborates and further explains this phenom-
enon, suffice it for now to recognize cloning as a powerful learning tool for percussionists!
Here is an example of how one might combine cloning with triple-channel learning.
Let’s say you’re working with a beginner named Chris (or even with a whole class of stu-
dents, because it works fine with a group, too) on playing a relaxed, free rebounding, basic
stroke. Begin with playing both sticks together (cloning) on single repeated strokes for a
while, simply like bouncing balls, not drumming. Then, by directing her attention to how
the stick feels in her hand, get Chris deeply involved in feeling the vibrations of the stick as
she makes a relaxed rebounding stoke off the drum with only her dominant hand. Then ask
Chris to find out how her “other stick” (in her non-dominant hand) vibrates in comparison
to the stick she is playing when she plays both sticks together. Your language is simply, “Check
out how much your other stick vibrates when you play both sticks together, Chris.” This
communication contains a pre-supposition that the other stick will vibrate and pulls Chris
into a deeper awareness mode of learning by feeling (and to some degree hearing and seeing,
too) the vibrations of the “other stick.” If Chris is told this when she is busy exploring the
look, sound, and feel of the stroke and stick in her dominant hand, she will simply proceed
to “check out” the vibrations of the other stick—in essence, she will bypass the self-con-
scious, judgmental part of her interfering, thinking mind without having the self-doubting
thoughts about attempting to play only with her “weak hand.” Continued encouragement
of this natural learning process by posing such questions as, “I wonder if the sticks actually
are different and your left stick vibrates more in your right hand?” or more simply, “How
does the left stick feel in the right hand?” leads Chris into further awareness as she exchanges
sticks between hands and enjoys the discovery learning. Cloning is presented throughout
Teaching Percussion and on the videos as a powerful practice and learning approach.
When a student learns a basic stroke, advanced techniques, or any kind of technical
skill through all three senses—watching it, listening to it, and feeling it––the learning
is more complete and permanent than through one or two senses and is always more
enjoyable. Triple-channel learning is a powerful tool for learning music, too.
Learning a musical score by memory for eventual recall often is done primarily
through our kinesthetic and auditory senses. As mentioned earlier, we “get the notes
under our hands” and, indeed, this is an accurate description of perhaps the most com-
mon learning strategy. We practice and, through repetitions of the passages, program our
“muscle memory” with the piece. (Although we know now, through recent scientific dis-
coveries, that practicing doesn’t actually program muscle memory. In reality, efficient and
mindful practicing builds a neural insulator called myelin, as discussed in the Preface.)
I nt r o d uc t i o n xxiii
While an auditory impression of the piece is also being imprinted (hence, the absolute
necessity of careful, accurate practice to program the ear and muscles) and, to some degree
perhaps, a visual representation of the printed notes or an image of the instrument being
played is being acquired, our main recall channel is often primarily our kinesthetic (or
muscle) memory. The truth in Gallwey’s formula of P 5 p 2 i is revealed to a player with
this type of learning strategy when performing a piece by memory in public. The player
is not realizing that the kinesthetic channel “gets dirty” (as Michael Colgrass calls it in his
Excellence in Performance Workshops) and is interfered with by the emotional anxiety of
the pressure of the performance, referred to as “inappropriate performance arousal” by
Jon Gorrie. Such a performance is often marred with memory lapses and playing below
one’s potential, as cited earlier with the example of an 80 percent performance as a result
of a player with 100 percent potential having 20 percent anxiety interference.
Jon Gorrie, in his excellent book Performing in the Zone from 2009, takes Gallwey’s
P 5 p 2 i theorem a step further by proposing his Alternative Performance Equation,
which acknowledges Gallwey’s formula and builds on it to include what Gorrie defines
as one’s cognitive and physical attributes combined with external interference and perfor-
mance arousal. Gorrie proposes that performance arousal exists in negative (anxiety)
and positive (excitement) forms, and he equates the appropriate amount of perfor-
mance arousal required with the appropriate amount of performance arousal experienced
as resulting in a satisfying and high quality musical performance. Gorrie explains the
psychopathology of performance arousal and performance anxiety from the “fight or
flight” response perspective and, throughout his book, presents practical techniques,
strategies, and exercises to retrain one’s mind. He states:
As a performer (rather than a hunter-gatherer), if you can train your mind to consciously and
sub-consciously understand that performance situations are non-threatening and indeed plea-
surable, you can eliminate performance anxiety, obtain an ideal level of positive performance
arousal for your performing situations, and ultimately achieve an optimal level of perfor-
mance, regardless of your performance sphere. And the best news is that in practise, bringing
your performance arousal level under control is not as complicated as it may seem! (38)
See Gorrie’s Performing in the Zone for his excellent insights into achieving quality
performances (www.thezonebook.com).
Triple-channel learning of the musical score can help to alleviate sub-standard perfor-
mances and relieve performance stress. By borrowing spelling strategies, as expounded in
the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) literature, the visual programming of the score
can be greatly enhanced through placing it to the left side in front of oneself (generally for
right-handed people) and studying the printed notes on the page. This eye movement, up
and to the left, aids in programming the visual recall of the notes. Further visual imprint-
ing of a piece can be accomplished by visually playing through a score while standing at a
percussion keyboard instrument and looking at, but not striking, the bars as the music is
mentally recalled and heard in one’s inner ear. Auditory recall will also be triggered and
enhanced as the mind develops greater flexibility with the score. This mental practice at
the instrument, as well as on a visualized instrument in one’s imagination, can prove to
be more difficult than actually playing through the piece by striking the bars; however,
the benefits of mental practice are well worth the self-discipline. Mental practicing, while
a common routine for many fine artists, can bring a little magic to players whose learning
strategies have never included visualizing. Additional study and the application of NLP
techniques, Inner Game methodologies, and visualization practices for performance excel-
lence are highly recommended. Abundant material can be found in books and on web-
sites by Gallwey, Green, and Gorrie (as previously cited), in Micahel Colgrass’ My Lessons
with Kumi, in Carrol McLaughlin’s Dr. Carrol’s Power Performance, and in other resources
in the Recommended Reading at the end of this Introduction.
We can conclude from the above that four important components are of paramount
importance in experiential learning: 1. having a clear awareness goal or learning objec-
tive in mind (either as articulated by the teacher or in the mind of the student), 2. being
xxiv In tro du ctio n
aware of all feedback (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) and aspects of the experience,
3. avoiding or reducing all forms of mental and physical interference, and 4. trusting in
the wisdom of the body, especially through cloning, to learn the intended skill or piece
of music. As for goal clarification, always keep in mind the game of darts. When playing,
one makes a lot more “misses” than “bull’s-eyes.” Yet one doesn’t get better at making
misses (even though it may seem that one is “practicing” misses), because one’s goal is
simply to make a bull’s-eye! The role of the teacher should be to remove all obstacles
that interfere with natural learning and making those bull’s-eyes, and then to guide the
student to an awareness of the present experience. This awareness includes sensitivity to
all visual, auditory, and kinesthetic body sensations and an honest acceptance of what is
happening so that learning is free to take place. See William Westney’s The Perfect Wrong
Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self in Recommended Reading at the end of the Intro-
duction for his provocative thoughts on “honest mistakes” and trusting oneself.
John Holt’s statements lambasting the educational system point to fear of failure
as the primary obstacle interfering with natural learning. This fear of failure is easily
instilled in the student’s mind by results-oriented expectations. These expectations may
be conscious, unconscious, or both, but their existence is manifested in the reduction of
learning (and performing) potential.
Teachers can instill a fear of failure with the type of instructions they give to the stu-
dent. A simple statement like “Relax your grip and try again to play that roll smoother”
is full of result expectations. The teacher should avoid telling the student exactly how to
“do” something with lots of what Tim Gallwey calls “Do Instructions.” The “do” expec-
tations invariably instill some degree of fear of failure and result in a reduction of learn-
ing (or performance). Instead, instructions should be given that lead the student into
an awareness of the activity by paying attention to the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic
feedback. These “Awareness Instructions” (as Gallwey calls them) foster optimum learn-
ing, because they are not results-oriented and are relevant and easy to comprehend. A
rephrasing of the above “Do Instruction” to an “Awareness Instruction” might be “What
happens if you loosen up the grip between your thumb and index finger and play a roll?”
The teacher must remember that the body does not understand or learn from language
instructions, but does understand and learn from experience and awareness.
In The Pianist’s Talent, Harold Taylor states, “Experience, training, environment,
in fact all aspects of existence contribute to the manifestation or the inhibition of one’s
potentialities.2 Even with conscious application of creative teaching techniques and
performance awareness, we still experience various types of mental and physical inter-
ference that inhibit our potentialities. Coping with this interference entails acknowledg-
ing and accepting it as it occurs, and consciously diverting one’s creative productive
energies and thoughts away from it. Various concentration exercises, which serve as
diversion techniques, have proven useful in learning and performance. A favorite strat-
egy is simply to acknowledge “what is” in the moment by thinking “Yep” when things
are going well and “Oops” when a mistake occurs. A favorite phrase of Michael Col-
grass’ is “Nothing’s happened, something is about to.” A former university colleague,
Dr. Carrol McLaughlin (author of Dr. Carrol’s Power Performance), simply says “Next”
to welcome the next moment. Common traits of these techniques include: 1. keeping
one’s thoughts and actions in the present moment by avoiding reflective, judgmental
thoughts of the past or future (reflecting on past mistakes or successes reduces, and can
eliminate, any chance for awareness of the present experience; thinking too much about
the future, such as an approaching difficult passage, creates results-expectations away
from the present moment and can generate self-doubt about one’s playing), and 2. occu-
pying or distracting the interfering thinking mind (called “Self I” in Tim Gallwey’s Inner
Game philosophy, and V for volition—“the conscious ego’s will to perform action”—by
Bonpensiere two decades earlier) to the extent of tricking it into concentrating on some
aspect of the activity that is easy, yet still relevant to the activity (called the “Doctrine of
the Easy” in Gallwey’s Inner Game philosophy). This distraction results in an increase of
awareness to the feedback of “what is,” which then allows for the optimum functioning
I nt r o d uc t i o n xxv
of one’s natural ability (called “Self II” by Gallwey, and V2 for volition 2—“the vegeta-
tive soul, which sees to it that the body does all the hundreds of things that have to be
done, if the action is to be carried out”—by Bonpensiere).
Suggested applications of these techniques are presented throughout this text
and on the companion videos. The specific instructions and video demonstrations are
designed to guide the student into an increased awareness of the learning and perfor-
mance experiences and to reduce interference from results-oriented expectations. Fur-
ther knowledge can be gained through study of the writings and ideas of Tim Gallwey,
Luigi Bonpensiere, Eloise Ristad, Jon Gorrie, William Westney, Margaret Elson, Thomas
Sterner, Larry Snyder, Barry Green, Michael Colgrass, Carrol McLaughlin, Joseph
O’Connor, Don Greene, Anders Ericsson, Daniel Coyle, and others listed under Recom-
mended Reading at the end of this Introduction.
Lastly, the more knowledge and understanding the teacher (called “director” or
“directress” in Montessori philosophy––the teacher directs the student to the next appro-
priate experience) and student have about the scientific psychophysical and mind-body
processes involved in the acquisition of musical skills, the better. When teaching percus-
sion, we need to direct our conscious efforts to the development of the entire psychophysi-
cal system, not merely to the structure and function of the physical playing apparatus. An
understanding of the interaction of the brain (central nervous system), body, and instru-
ment will aid the teacher in guiding the student into awareness learning experiences.
Adoption of the scientific principles of the structure and function of the central ner-
vous system (as expounded in Tone Deaf and All Thumbs? by Frank R. Wilson and in
The Art of Piano Playing by George Kochevitsky) will enable the percussion teacher to
understand, in simplest form, that the performance of a motor skill involves a chain of
stimuli and responses that occur sequentially in what is called a ballistic movement. The
sequence is: visual stimulus (the note sign) auditory stimulus (the inwardly heard note)
anticipation of motor act motor act resulting in actual sound auditory perception
and evaluation of the actual sound.3 The understanding of these scientific facts has several
ramifications for teaching percussion that are built into the consistent playing approach
presented throughout this text. For example, it is recommended that fundamental
strokes be developed on an open ringing snare drum (as opposed to a practice pad)
and on low marimba bars, in order to allow for the occurrence and enhancement of the
auditory stimulus—the inwardly heard note—and the auditory perception and evaluation
of the actual sound in this sequence of stimuli and response. Comments throughout the
text and on the videos are based on an awareness of this entire stimulus-and-response
sequence with regard to all aspects of practicing and performance.
Another form of neurophysical feedback exists in the form of proprioceptive sensa-
tions (self-perceiving, inner body tissue stimuli, as in the muscles and tendons, that are
conveyed to our central nervous system through movements of parts of our bodies).
When one is aware of these and other types of neurophysical feedback one can then better
understand, for example, that the initial development of a good touch and, later, of nat-
ural velocity on keyboard percussion instruments is greatly contingent upon employing
an exaggerated full-stroke mallet height and slow proprioceptive awareness in the begin-
ning stages of practice and, later, consciously lowering mallet height for appropriate stroke
height efficiency. Furthermore, a sensitive awareness and synthesis of kinesthetic experi-
ences (sensations perceived from movement, position, and tension in parts of the body) and
other exteroceptive sensations (visual, auditory, tactile/touch, stereognostic/shape, baric/
weight, or chromatic/color) facilitate the learning and development of playing skills.
Body poise and postural use play a paramount role in achieving optimum learn-
ing and performance potential. Many piano pedagogues have cited the importance
of proper poise and movement at the instrument: Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Josef
Lhevinne, Artur Schnabel, and Abby Whiteside, among others. Harold Taylor, in his
book The Pianist’s Talent, goes so far as to define talent as “the capacity for co-ordination”
and declare that “posture is therefore the key to talent.”4 He concludes that “the total
posture is the determining factor in the pattern of behavior, and without any alteration
xxvi In tro du ctio n
in the posture there can be no improvement in the capacity for co-ordination.”5 Taylor
supports his revelation with the teachings of the French pianist Raymond Thiberge, the
work of F. M. Alexander, and the superb examples of the union of poise and coordina-
tion seen in photos of such performers as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Ferruccio Busoni, and
Anton Rubinstein. Michael Gelb, in Body Learning, An Introduction to the Alexander Tech-
nique, recognizes the connection between poise and prodigious performance with the
inclusion of a photograph of Arthur Rubinstein at the piano as a superb example of
poise in both performance and everyday life.6 Max Roach, Elvin Jones, George Marsh,
and other legendary drum set artists likewise portray such poise in performance.
The study and practice of principles such as the Alexander Technique, the Felden-
krais Method, t’ai chi chuan or other martial arts, yoga, autogenic relaxation, and other
mindful meditation increases sensitivity and kinesthetic awareness and improves body
poise and postural use. This improved body awareness and use contribute to a balanced
integration of the whole body and mind, which can result in optimum performance
(with greater natural ease and relaxation) and heightened creativity, awareness, and
satisfaction. See Recommended Reading at the end of the Introduction. Suggestions
and comments regarding instrument setup and stance are offered throughout this text
and on the videos to aid in promoting good body-instrument relationships.
Phil Farkas, in his celebrated The Art of Horn Playing, states, “Practice on a brass
instrument is done by the ‘trial and error’ method…that of learning, or intuitively find-
ing, the right way to play a passage by process of elimination.”7 As in the example of a
child learning to walk, it is clear that what really takes place is learning through experi-
ential awareness, or “trial and learning” more than “trial and error.” We learn from the
“error” but we learn, or can learn, as much or more from paying attention to all aspects
of the “trial”—all that happens during the activity of playing. Furthermore, it is not so
much the positive-result intention of a given exercise that induces learning (that is, which
method book is used in teaching) but the awareness of all mind-body experiences while
doing the exercise. Indeed, our intuition, trust in the wisdom of our bodies, and con-
scious awareness of the experience are our most natural, efficient, and powerful teachers.
Numerous photographs and specific descriptions in the text and demonstrations
on the videos show how the particular grip, stroke, or exercise should be executed and
how to do it correctly. The teacher should realize that these are included purely for clari-
fication of an area of correctness and are intended to be adapted, with much flexibility, to
suit each individual student’s idiosyncrasies in hand size, muscle flexibility, capacity for
coordination, and so on.
Assimilation of new percussion concepts and techniques will prove gratifying to
both teacher and student when presented with awareness instructions that are rich in
visual, sound, and sensory imagery, contain metaphorical explanations and compari-
sons, and use abundant demonstrations (for auditory, kinesthetic, and visual stimula-
tion and concept clarification) together with imitation by the student.
Many other aspects of the psychophysical relationships involved in all levels of
teaching and performance can be acquired through selected reading. Optimum learning
and performing potential will be realized if the indivisibility of mind and body is recog-
nized and learning through experiential awareness is encouraged.
■ RECOMMENDED READING
Alcantara, Pedro de. Indirect Procedures, A Musician’s Guide to the Bandler, Richard. Using Your Brain — For A Change: Neuro-
Alexander Technique (New York: Oxford, 1997). Linguistic Programming. Ed.Connirae Andreas and Steve
Andreas (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1985). http://www
Andreas, Connirae and Steve Andreas. Change Your Mind and
.realpeoplepress.com/home.html.
Keep the Change (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1987).
Bandler, Richard and John Grinder. The Structure of Magic,
Andreas, Connirae and Steve Andreas. Heart of the Mind (Moab,
2 vols (Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books, Inc.,
UT: Real People Press, 1989).
1975–76).
Andreas, Connirae with Tamara Andreas. CORE Transformation,
Beeching, Angela Myles. Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career
Reaching the Wellspring Within (Moab, UT: Real People
in Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Press, 1994).
I nt r o d uc t i o n xxvii
Bonpensiere, Luigi. New Pathways to Piano Technique: A Study of the Frieberg, Samuel. The Complete Pianist–Body, Mind, Synthesis
Relations Between Mind and Body with Special Reference to Piano (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press., Inc. 1993).
Playing (New York: The Philosophical Library, 1953).
Gallwey, W. Timothy. The Inner Game of Golf (New York: Random
Booth, Eric. The Music Teaching Artist’s Bible :Becoming a Virtuoso House, 1981, 2008 Revised edition).
Educator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
_______. The Inner Game of Tennis (New York: Random House, 1974).
Brennan, Richard. The Alexander Technique, Natural Poise for Health
_______. Inner Tennis, Playing the Game (New York: Random
(New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1991).
House, 1976).
Bretto, Charlotte C., Judith Delozier, John Grinder, and Silvia J.
_______. The Inner Game of Work (New York: Random House, 2000).
Topel, Ed. Leaves Before the Wind (Bonny Doom, CA: Grinder,
Delozier & Associates, 1991). Gallwey, W. Timothy and Bob Kreigel. Inner Skiing (New York:
Random House, 1977). http://www.theinnergame.com
Bronson, Po and Ashley Merryman. Top Dog, The Science of Winning
/index.html.
and Losing (New York: Twelve, Hachette Book Group, 2013).
Gardner, Howard. The Disciplined Mind, What All Students Should
Bruser, Madeline. The Art of Practicing, A Guide to Making Music
Understand (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1999).
From the Heart (New York: Bell Tower, 1997).
______. Frames of Mind (New York: BasicBooks, 1983).
Buyer, Paul. Marching Bands and Drumlines, Secrets of Success from
the Best of the Best (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music, 2009). ______. Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (New York:
BasicBooks, 1993). http://www.thirteen.org/edonline
_______. Working Toward Excellence, 8 Values for Achieving
/concept2class/month1.
Uncommon Success in Work and Life (New York: Morgan
James Publishing, 2012). Gawain, Shakti. Creative Visualization and Creative Visualization
Workbook (New York: Bantan Books, Inc., 1978 and 1990).
Caldwell, Robert. The Performer Prepares (Dallas: Pst...Inc., 1990).
Gelb, Michael. Body Learning: An Introduction to the Alexander
Chase, Mildred. Improvisation, Music From The Inside Out
Technique (London: Aurum Press, 1981).
(Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book Co., 1988).
Gordon, Edwin E. Learning Sequences in Music. 1993 ed.
_______. Just Being at the Piano (Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book
(Chicago: GIA Publications, 1993).
Co., 1985).
Gorrie, Jon. Performing in the Zone, Unleash Your True Performance
Colgrass, Michael. My Lessons with Kumi, How I Learned to Perform
Potential (Create Space Independent Publishing Platform,
with Confidence in Life and Work (Moab, UT: Real People
www.thezonebook.com, 2009).
Press, 1979). www.michaelcolgrass.com.
Green, Barry. The Inner Game of Music Video with Eugene
Cook, Gary D. Teaching Percussion (New York: Schirmer Books, 1988).
Corporon, et al. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin,
Cook, Gary D. Teaching Percussion, 2nd ed. (New York: Schirmer 1988, Clinics on Cassette, 1990).
Books, 1997).
_______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Band with Eugene
Cook, Gary D. Teaching Percussion, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Corporon (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1991).
Thomson/Schirmer, 2006).
______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Full Orchestra with
Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code (London: Arrow Books, Penguin Margery Deutch (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1992).
Random House, 2010).
______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Piano with Phyllis
Crabtree, Philip D. and Donald H. Foster. Sourcebook for Research Lehrer (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1994).
in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Solo Instruments, 2
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow, The Psychology of Optimal vols. (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1993).
Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1990).
______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Strings with Gerald
DeLozier, Judith and John Grinder. Turtles All the Way Down: Doan (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1992).
Prerequisites to Personal Genius (Bonny Doom, CA: Grinder,
______. The Inner Game of Music Workbook for Voice with Donna
DeLozier & Associates, 1987).
Loewy (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1994).
Dilts, Robert. Applications of Neuro-Linguistic Programming:
______. The Mastery of Music, Ten Pathways to True Artistry
A Practical Guide to Communication, Learning, and Change
(New York: Broadway Books, 2003).
(Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1983).
Green, Barry and W. Timothy Gallwey. The Inner Game of Music
Dunsby, Jonathan. Performing Music, Shared Concerns (New
(Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1986).
York: Oxford, 1995).
Green, Barry and James Hart. The Inner Game of Music Solo
Elson, Margaret. Passionate Practice: The Musician’s Guide to Learning,
Workbooks. Vols. I–IV. (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1996).
Memorizing, and Performing (Oakland, CA: Regent Press, 2002).
Greene, Don. Performance Success–Performing Your Best
Ericsson, Anders and Robert Pool. PEAK, Secrets from the New
Under Pressure (New York: Routledge, 2002). (https://
Science of Expertise (New York: Houghton Miffin Harcourt
peakperformancetrainingschool.com)
Publishing Co., 2016).
Grindea, Carola. Tensions in the Performance of Music: A Symposium,
Famularo, Dom. The Cycle of Self Empowerment (New York:
6th revised edition (London: Kahn & Averill, 1998)
Wizdom Enterprises, 2000).
Grinder, John and Richard Bandler. Frogs into Princes: Neuro-Linguistic
Farkas, Philip. The Art of Musicianship (Atlanta: Wind Music
Programming™ (Moab, UT: Real People Press, 1979).
Publications, 1976).
xxviii In tro du ctio n
Havas, Kato. Stagefright, Its Causes and Cures with Special Reference McLaughlin, Carrol. Dr. Carrol’s Power Performance (Tucson:
to Violin Playing (London: Bosworth & Co., Ltd., 1973). IntegrityInk.US.LLC, 2008). https://www.harp.com
/product/power-performance-book/
Herrigel, Eugen. Zen in the Art of Archery (New York: Random
House/Vintage Books, 1971). Murphy, Shane. The Achievement Zone (New York: Berkley
Book, 1997).
_______. The Method of Zen (New York: Random House/Vintage
Books, 1974). Nagel, C. Van, Edward J. Reese, MaryAnn Reeve, and Robert
Siudzinski. Megateaching and Learning: Neuro-Linguistic
Highstein, Ellen. Making Music in Looking Glass Land, A Guide
Programming Applied to Education, Vol. I. (Portland, OR:
to Survival and Business Skills for the Classical Musician, 4th
Metamorphous Press, 1985; originally published by Indian
edition (New York: Concert Artists Guild, 2003).
Rock Beach, FL: Southern Institute Press, Inc., 1985).
Hoeft, Jen. FUNdamental Fitness, Playground Exercises for Grownups
Niemi, Patti. Sticking it Out: From Juilliard to the Orchestra Pit, A
(Nashville: Read Publishing, 2004).
Percussionist’s Memoir (Toronto: ECW Press, 2016).
Holly, Rich. Majoring in Music: All the Stuff You Need to Know
O’Connor, Joseph. Not Pulling Strings, An Exploration of Music
(Galesville, MD: Meredith Music, 2009).
and Instrumental Teaching Using Neuro-Linguistic Programming
Holt, John. How Children Fail (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964). (Portland, OR: Metamorphous Press, 1987). POP: buy on
Internet.
_______. How Children Learn (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin
Books, 1972). O’Connor, Joseph and Ian McDermott. Principles of NLP (San
Francisco: Thorsons/HarperCollins Publishers, 1996).
_______. Never Too Late (New York: Delacorte Press, 1978).
O’Connor, Joseph and John Seymour, Introducing NLP (San
Houston, Jean. The Possible Human: A Course in Extending Your
Francisco: Conari Press, 2011).
Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities (Los Angeles: J. P.
Tarcher, Inc., 1982). Ostrander, Sheila and Lynn Schroeder. Superlearning (New York:
Dell Publishing Co., 1981).
_______. The Search for The Beloved, Journeys in Sacred Psychology
(Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher, Inc., 1987). Ostrander, Sheila and Lynn Schroeder. Supermemory (New York:
Dell Pub. Co., 1990).
Ingalls, Joan S. The Reframing of Performance Anxiety, A Constructiv-
ist View (Port Jefferson Station, NY: Mind Plus Muscle, 1994). Palladino, Lucy Jo. Find Your Focus Zone (New York: Free Press/
Simon & Schuster, 2007).
Jacobson, Sid. Meta-Cation: Prescriptions for Some Ailing Educational
Processes, Vol. I (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1983). Parent, Joseph. Zen Golf (New York: Doubleday/Random
House, 2002).
_______. Meta-Cation: New Improved Formulas for Thinking about
Thinking, Vol. II (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1986). Paull, Barbara and Christine Harrison. The Athletic Musician, a
guide to playing without pain (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow
________. Meta-Cation: Powerful Applications for Strong Relief,
Press, Inc., 1997).
Vol. III (Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications, 1986).
Petrella, Nick and Diane. The Musician’s Toolbox, Thoughts on Teach-
Janssen, Jeff. Winning the Mental Game (video and workbook)
ing and Learning Music (www.themusicianstoolbox.com, 2005).
(Tucson: Jeff Janssen, n.d.).
Reubont, Dale. Anxiety and Musical Performance (On Playing the
Johnston, Philip. The Practice Revolution (Pearce ACT, Australia:
Piano from Memory) (DaCapo Press, 1985).
PracticeSpot Press 2007).
Ristad, Eloise. A Soprano on Her Head (Moab, UT: Real People
Klickstein, Gerald. The Musician’s Way: A Guide to Practice, Perfor-
Press, 1982).
mance, and Wellness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
Salmon, Paul G. and Robert G. Meyer. Notes From the Green
Kochevitsky, George. The Art of Piano Playing: A Scientific Approach
Room (New York: Lexington Books, 1992).
(Princeton, NJ: Summy-Birchard Music, 1967).
Sand, Barbara Lourie. Teaching Genius Dorothy DeLay and the
Lamb, John. Anatomy of Drumming (San Bernardino, CA: John
Making of a Musician (Portland: Amadeus Press, 2000).
Lamb, 2016).
Sandor, Gyorgy. On Piano Playing: Motion, Sound and Expression
Lardon, Michael. Finding Your Zone, Ten Core Lessons for
(New York: Schirmer Books, 1982).
Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life (New York:
Penguin Group, 2008). Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1976).
Lazarus, Arnold. In The Mind’s Eye (New York: The Guildford
Press, 1984). Schneiderman, Barbara. Confident Music Performance, The Art of
Preparing (MMB Music, Inc., 1991).
Loehr, James. The New Toughness Training for Sports (New York:
Penguin Books, 1995). Shoemaker, Fred. Extraordinary Golf: The Art of the Possible (New
York: Berkley Publishing Group, 1996).
Maltz, Maxwell, MD. Psycho-Cybernetics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1960). Snyder, Larry. “The Adaptation of Timothy Gallwey’s “The Inner
Game of Tennis” to Percussion Keyboard Performance and
Mann, Stanley. Triggers, A New Approach to Self-Motivation
Teaching.” (DMA Dissertation, University of Illinois, 1982).
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1987).
Sterner, Thomas M. The Practicing Mind, Bringing Discipline and Focus
McCluggage, Denise. The Centered Skier, rev. ed. (New York:
Into Your Life (Wilmington: Mountain Sage Publishing, 2006).
Bantam Books, 1983).
Storr, Anthony. Music and the Mind (The Free Press/Macmillan,
1992).
I nt r o d uc t i o n xxix
Syed, Matthew. Bounce (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010). Whitaker, Charlotte and Donald Tanner. But I Played it Perfectly
in the Practice Room (Lanham, MD: University Press of
Taylor, Harold. The Pianist’s Talent (New York: Taplinger Publish-
America, 1987).
ing Co., 1979).
Wilson, Frank R. The Hand, How Its Use Shapes The Brain, Language,
Triplett, Robert. Stagefright, Letting it Work for You (Nelson Hall, 1983).
and Human Culture (New York: Vintage Books/Random
Usher, Nancy. Your Own Way With Music, A Career and Resource House, 1999).
Guide (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990).
______. Tone Deaf and All Thumbs?: An Invitation to Music-Making
Waitzkin, Josh. The Art of Learning, An Inner Journey to for Late Bloomers and Non-Prodigies (New York: Viking-
Optimal Performance (New York: Free Press/Simon & Penguin, Inc., 1986).
Schuster, 2007).
Wilson, Frank R. and Franz L. Roehmann, Ed. The Biology of Music
Werner, Kenny. Effortless Mastery—Liberating the Master Musician Making: Proceedings of the 1984 Denver Conference (St. Louis:
Within (New Albany:Jamey Abersold Jazz, Inc., 1996). MMB Music, 1988).
Westney, William. The Perfect Wrong Note, Learning to Trust Your Workman, Darin “Dutch”. Drummer’s Injury Book (New York:
Musical Self (Pompton Plains, NJ: Amadeus Press, 2003). Taylor & Francis Books, 2005).
URL RESOURCES
Any of these links will take you to a many, many more resources:
Alexander Technique, The Complete Guide—http://www Paul Buyer’s website, books and articles— http://www
.alexandertechnique.com. .paulbuyer.com.
The American Society for the Alexander Technique—http://www Michael Colgrass’ website, books, selected writings, blogs—
.amsatonline.org. www.michaelcolgrass.com.
Auditionhacker, Rob Knopper’s website–– http://www The Feldenkrais Store—http://www.achievingexcellence.com.
.robknopper.com/auditionhacker
Jon Gorrie’s Performing in the Zone website—www.thezonebook.com.
The Bulletproof Musician courses, resources, coaching—http://
Don Greene’s Peak Performance Training School––https://
www.bulletproofmusician.com.
peakperformancetrainingschool.com
Many excellent online and electronic resources and suggested further reading:
The Inner Game/Tim Gallwey—http://theinnergame.com. NLP Comprehensive—http://www.nlpco.com.
Metamorphous Press, books on NLP—https://openlibrary.org/ Real People Press, excellent NLP books, training videos,
publishers/Metamorphous_Press. CDs—http://www.realpeoplepress.com.
Multiple Intelligences—http://www.thirteen.org/edonline The Practice Spot Press—www.practicespot.com.
/concept2class/mi/.
The Practicing Mind, Thomas M. Sterner’s website—
Multiple Intelligences official website—http:// www.thepracticingmind.com.
multipleintelligencesoasis.org.
Frank Wilson’s article, Mind, Muscle, and Music—http://www
The Musician’s Toolbox website—www.themusicianstoolbox.com. .bandworld.org/pdfs/SPRINGMindMuscleandMusic.pdf/.
Select YouTube Channels: videos, playlists, channels, discussions

@percussion—100 Podcasts as of July 6, 2017, conversations performances and discussions—https://www.youtube
with guest artists on percussion history, performance, and .com/user/tburritt1971—Burritt’s website: http://www
pedagogy—https://www.youtube.com/channel .thomasburritt.com
/UCXQGSZbZ8sF7LAiVtGmUZBg—Casey Cangelosi host
Vic Firth educational videos—https://www.youtube.com/user
with Ben Charles, Laurel Black, Megan Arns and guests—
/vicfirthdrumsticks
Cangelosi’s website: https://www.youtube.com/user
/CaseyCangelosi William James Percussion—St. Louis Symphony—https://www
.youtube.com/user/WJPercussion
Black Swamp Percussion educational videos—https://www
.youtube.com/user/blackswampperc Rob Knopper – Met Orchestra, percussionhacker and audition-
hacker—https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLKK
Percussion Axiom TV—discussions of contemporary percussion
cZJyZjUxBihfiHQunRw
performance and pedagogy—Thomas Burritt and guests,
xxx In tro du ctio n
Thirty Typical Percussion Related FaceBook Pages and many more –– search any manufacturer, artist,
group, topic, etc.
All Marimba Players Orchestral Percussion Talk
The Art of Drumming PAS Health and Wellness
California Percussion Rental A Percussionists Handbook
Cloyd Duff Appreciation Society Percussive Arts Society (Any PAS state chapter)
Cloyd Duff Timpani Masterclass Percussion Discussion
Cool Stuff for Drummers The Percussion Room
Custom Drum Builders Steve Marimba Chavez
Drum Teachers’ Lounge Timpani and Percussion Swap Shop
Fred D. Hinger Appreciation Society Timpani Iconography
I Teach Percussion Timpani Shop Talk
Ludwig Drum Collectors University Percussion Networking
Marimba and Xylophone History University Percussion Teachers
Marimba Nandayapa Vibe Summit
Marimba.org Vibraphone Club
Musical Theater Percussion and Drum Talk Vibraphone Literature Headquarters
■ NOTES
1. John Holt, How Children Fail (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 4. Taylor, op. cit., p. 25.
1964), p. 167.
5. Ibid., p. 22.
2. Harold Taylor, The Pianist’s Talent (New York: Taplinger
6. Michael Gelb, Body Learning: An Introduction to the Alexander
Publishing Co., 1979), p. 16.
Technique (London: Aurum Press, 1981), p. 24.
3. George Kouchevitsky, The Art of Piano Playing: A Scientific
7. Phil Farkas, The Art of Horn Playing (Princeton, NJ: Summy-
Approach (Princeton, NJ: Summy-Birchard Music, 1967),
Birchard Music, 1956), p. 30.
pp. 30–31.
Ab o u t the A u th o r
Gary Cook is Professor Emeritus of Music in the School of Music at the University of
Arizona in Tucson, where he founded the percussion studies program in 1975 and was
Director of Percussion until retiring in 2008. He has been Artist in Residence at the Uni-
versity of Nevada Las Vegas since 2008 where he teaches graduate seminars in percus-
sion. He began his college teaching career at Louisiana Tech University in 1972. Well
known as the author of Teaching Percussion—its three editions used worldwide—Cook
was Timpanist and Principal Percussionist with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for
over two decades, and he has held similar posts over the years with the Arizona Opera
and other orchestras. From 1994 to 1999, he served as Director of the University of
Arizona School of Music and Dance. In the summers, Cook has been Principal Percus-
sionist with the Crested Butte Music Festival in Colorado and has performed with other
summer music festivals in Colorado and Nevada. He enjoys commissioning new music
for percussion and chamber music and voice combinations, and he has premiered and
recorded many commissions. His 2009 CD on Albany Records, Towers of Power, with
Jonathan Haas features the wind ensemble version of the Philip Glass Concerto Fantasy
for Two Timpanists and Orchestra. From 2007 to 2008, Cook was President of the inter-
national professional percussion organization, Percussive Arts Society (PAS), and he
received the PAS Lifetime Achievement in Education Award in 2011. He has performed
at PAS International Conventions (PASIC) and at festivals in Europe.
A native of Michigan, Professor Cook holds degrees from the University of
Michigan, and he has traveled widely in the U.S., Europe, Scandinavia, Trinidad, Bali,
and Chile studying, teaching, and performing. He was recognized for outstanding
teaching in the University of Arizona College of Fine Arts as the first recipient of the
coveted Putnam Excellence in Teaching Award in 1990, the James Anthony Sustained
Excellence in Teaching Award in 2005, and the School of Music’s Maestro Award for
student achievements in 2005.
Professor Cook is a contributing author to such publications as Percussive Notes and
the Encyclopedia of Percussion. He is a proud endorser of Sabian cymbals and is recipient
of the Sabian Lifetime Achievement Award. He is most proud of his former students,
who hold distinguished professorships in colleges and universities around the U.S.
and in Trinidad, perform professionally around the world, and are successful teachers,
administrators, and performers in all areas of music and the arts.
■ About the Contributors

Robin Horn (http://www.robinhorn.com) exemplifies the complete musician, with
skills as a live and studio drummer, composer, arranger, producer, recording art-
ist, electronic percussion programmer and demonstrator, clinician, and educator. His
advanced understanding of electronics has enabled Horn to expand the traditional
boundaries surrounding most percussionists. Utilizing all facets of music—including
rhythm, melody and harmony—he brings music to life from behind his drum set.
Horn has performed around the world extensively with his father, the late renowned
jazz flutist Paul Horn. As a widely versatile drummer, he has performed or recorded
with Airto, Brian Bromberg, Michael Bruce (Alice Cooper), David Friesen, Frank
Gambale, Andy Griffith, James Ingram, The Jets, Patrick Moraz, Aaron Neville, Linda
xxxi
xxxii Abo u t th e Au th o r
Ronstadt, John Stowell, Ben Vereen, and many, many others. As a recording artist, he
has two CD releases: “Fast Lane” and “Collection.”
Horn has been an Artist in Residence at the University of Arizona since 1994, teach-
ing advanced drum set and electronic percussion applications part time. He also has
been a top clinician for Yamaha from 1988 to the present.
Dr. Scott Deal (http://www.scottdeal.net) resides in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he is a

Professor of Music Technology and Percussion and the Director of the Donald Tavel Arts
and Technology Research Center at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.
He also serves as artist-faculty at the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance
Practice at the New England Conservatory. He was a Professor of Music at the University
of Alaska Fairbanks from 1995 to 2007, where he founded the percussion and technology
programs and was a Research Affiliate at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center.
Dr. Deal was formerly the Principal Percussionist of the Fairbanks Symphony and
the Timpanist of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra. A specialist in melding music with new
technology, he has been a featured soloist at the Sub Tropics New Music Festival; May
in Miami; the SEAMUS International Electronic Music Conference; the Northwest Per-
cussion Festival; London’s Almeida Theatre; the Arena Stage in Washington, DC; the
ALTERNATIVA Festival in Moscow, Russia; and various Percussive Arts Society (PAS)
Days of Percussion and International Conventions.
Continually inspired by new and emerging artistic technologies, Dr. Deal is the
founder of the Telematic Collective—an Internet performance group comprising artists
and computer specialists. He is a founding member and percussionist for the computer-
acoustic trio Big Robot. Dr. Deal was also the president of the PAS Alaska Chapter, and
is a frequent contributor of articles and service to PAS and MENC (National Association
for Music Education).
Dr. Michael B. Vercelli (http://www.michaelvercelli.com) is the director of the World

Music Performance Center at West Virginia University, where he also directs summer
study-abroad courses to Ghana and Brazil that focus on music, dance, and cultural
immersion. While well-versed in the classical percussion repertoire, Dr. Vercelli’s spe-
cialty lies in non-Western instruments. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Per-
cussion Performance with a minor in Ethnomusicology from the University of Arizona.
Dr. Vercelli’s research focuses on the transmission and performance practice of the
percussive traditions of Africa and African Diaspora. He has conducted long-term field-
work on the xylophone traditions of Ghana and has studied in Brazil, Uganda, Cuba,
and Bali. He has received many awards for both his performance and his study of indig-
enous music, and he has released recordings with master Ghanaian xylophonists Tijan
Dorwana and Bernard Woma. Dr. Vercelli has presented his research at the Society for
Ethnomusicology and the Percussive Arts Society International Convention.
Todd Hammes (www.ToddHammes.com) is an eclectic percussionist and composer

who creates meaningful connections between himself, his students, his colleagues, and
audiences everywhere. Currently residing in Madison, Wisconsin, he teaches, com-
poses, and performs with an ever-widening network of friends and musicians. He regu-
larly performs with Ben Sidran, the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, and the Madison
Symphony. He also teaches percussion and world music at the University of Wisconsin–
Madison and Edgewood College.
Hammes began performing with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in 1989 and, in
2007, started work on a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin–
Madison, as a Paul Collins Wisconsin Distinguished Graduate Fellow under the guid-
ance of Dr. Anthony DiSanza. While pursuing the degree, he was co-director of the
World Percussion Ensemble and created a tabla class, and he became a mainstay of the
percussion faculty upon graduation in 2010.
A b o ut t he A ut ho r xxxiii
Hammes has extensively studied classical, chamber, and western contemporary

music—earning a BM from the University of Arizona in 1992—as well as the music of the
world. He is a disciple of the late Pandit Sharda Sahai of Benares, India—widely consid-
ered one of the world’s greatest tabla players—and he studied with master hand drum-
mer Glen Velez, as well as with notable Latin, African, and Middle Eastern musicians.
As a composer, Hammes has received many commissions for original music. These
include works for dance, theater, and the concert hall. As a teacher, Hammes leads
teacher training programs, clinics, and master classes in hand drumming, focusing on
community and the universal similarities between people.
Hammes’ recordings include his solo CD “Thoughts, Music for Percussion (Mostly)”
by Todd Hammes and his Tool and Drum Ensemble. He can be heard on Sonoran Con-
sort recordings and on more than 25 recordings of other artists. He is a World Music
Artist for REMO percussion, and he uses Promark sticks and mallets.
David Rodenkirch was the principal marching percussion arranger and writer for the
Pride of Arizona Drumline at the University of Arizona from 1996 to 2015, and he served
as the University of Arizona Director of Marching Percussion from 1996 to 2007. He
is currently a special education teacher in the Lake Oswego school district in Oregon,
where he lives with his family.
Rodenkirch’s involvement in teaching percussion and his experience as a perform-
ing musician span over 30 years, including marching percussion instructor at Oregon
State University from 2010 to 2014, as well as his involvement on the percussion staff
of the Sunset Regiment Drum & Bugle Corps, serving on the staff of the University of
Arizona beginning in 1990, and serving as Marching Percussion Director and Head
Arranger for the Copper Bowl and Insight.com Bowl All-Star Bands. Rodenkirch has
served as a clinician and percussion judge for a variety of festivals and events through-
out Arizona and Oregon since 1986, and he has instructed and arranged for many high
school drumlines throughout Southern Arizona.
As a freelance musician, Rodenkirch plays percussion, drum set, and Zendrum. He
studied at the University of Oslo, from 1992 to 1993, and at the University of Arizona,
where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (with a minor in Music) and a Mas-
ter of Arts degree in Educational Psychology. From 2000 to 2008, he worked in adminis-
tration at Pima Community College as the Advanced Program Coordinator. Beginning
in 2004, he served as Program Manager with the Public Safety and Emergency Services
Institute in Tucson, Arizona.
Joe Gallegos is currently a Senior Website Designer and Developer at the University
of Arizona, having served as a recording engineer at Pure Wave Audio and Allusion
Studios in Tucson. He earned his Bachelor of Music in Music Theory and Composi-
tion from the University of Arizona in 1998, where he studied under renowned faculty
members Daniel Asia and Tom Patterson. As an undergraduate, he spent considerable
time in several university ensembles, including the Pride of Arizona Drumline and the
university’s Steel Band.
Gallegos has a combined 12 years of experience in performing and teaching contempo-
rary marching and rudimental percussion at both the secondary and post-secondary levels.
From 1999 to 2003, he served as Associate Director of Marching Percussion for the Pride of
Arizona, and he was their Director of Marching Percussion from 2004 to 2005, before going
into full-time recording studio work as an assistant audio engineer at Allusion Studios.
Jeffrey M. Moore, currently Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at the Uni-
versity of Central Florida, joined that faculty in 1994 as Director of Percussion Studies
and is a Professor of Music in Percussion. He served as the first Director of the School of
Performing Arts from 2013 to 2016 and as Music Department Chair from 2009 to 2013.
Professor Moore’s instructional duties include teaching applied percussion majors,
the Percussion Ensemble, and the Marimba Band. Additionally, he supervises the
xxxiv Abo u t th e Au th o r
instruction and music arranging for the Marching Knights drumline and assists in the
instruction of Black Steel, the school’s steel drum band.
Active in all facets of percussion, Professor Moore has performed with several major
symphony orchestras and is a frequent performer of chamber music. He also performs
on drum set and is an international clinician, lecturer, and soloist. He has served as the
Percussion Director of the internationally acclaimed Madison Scouts Drum and Bugle
Corps, and as Program Consultant and Percussion Arranger with several European,
Japanese, and Indonesian drum corps and bands. He was the battery arranger for the
1999 Drum Corps Associates World Champion Syracuse Brigadiers.
Professor Moore is a contributing author to the 3rd edition of Teaching Percussion,
and he has published two method book and CD packages, entitled Fundamental Drum-
stick Control and Drumstick Control, with Alfred publications. He has served as an associ-
ate editor of Percussive Notes, the Percussive Arts Society’s scholarly journal, and is an
active contributor to the Society.
Dr. Jeannine Remy is a lecturer of music at the Centre for Creative and Festival Arts at the
University of the West Indies (UWI) in St. Augustine, Trinidad, where she teaches steel pan,
percussion, and ethnomusicology. Originally from Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, she holds
a DMA from the University of Arizona, as well as Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from
Northern Illinois University. Prior to UWI, Dr. Remy was a tenured professor of music at
Idaho State University from 1992 to 2003 and taught at the University of Wisconsin Osh-
kosh from 1990 to 1992. She was also the musical director and arranger for the Hatters Steel
Orchestra in San Fernando in 2002 and for the Invaders Steel Orchestra in 1998 and 2000.
Dr. Remy is internationally recognized for her contributions to the art of steel drum per-
forming and arranging. She is an adjudicator for Pan Trinbago, the world governing body
for steel pan. She was a recipient of a Fulbright Award in 2000, which allowed her to lecture
at UWI and research the history of steel drums. Her research will culminate in the publica-
tion of a book on the history of the Invaders Steel Orchestra of Woodbrook, Trinidad.
Drew Lang is Adjunct Lecturer, Marimba in the Southern Methodist University Mead-
ows School of Music in Dallas and is the newest contributing author to the Enhanced 3rd
Edition of Teaching Percussion. He performs regularly with the Dallas Opera Orchestra
and the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, is the principal mallet player with the Dal-
las Wind Symphony, and is the percussionist for Casa Mañana Musicals. He played
the world premiere of Fly and a newly staged version of Les Miz at the Dallas Theater
Center, and he has been the regular percussionist for Broadway shows at the Winspear
Opera Hall. Lang plays drum set in local symphonies, churches, and other venues, as
well as with the Dallas-based rock band Scarlet Vermillion.
As a performing marimba artist, Lang has commissioned and premiered works for
marimba in solo, chamber, and concerto settings. An active recitalist and clinician, he
appears throughout the U.S. He has premiered two concertos by G. Bradley Bodine, and he
recorded David Maslanka’s Concerto for Marimba and Band with the University of Arizona
Wind Ensemble and Dan McCarthy’s Concerto for Marimba, Percussion, and Synthesizers
with the Meadows Percussion Ensemble. Lang was part of a consortium of eleven univer-
sity percussion ensembles commissioning and performing G. Bradley Bodine’s Namaste:
Concerto for Marimba and Percussion Ensemble. He has also recorded Astor Piazzolla’s His-
toire du Tango with flutist Helen Blackburn on the Breckenridge Music Festival label, and
he performed Eric Ewazen’s Concerto for Marimba and String Orchestra with the Festival in
August 2010. He was also a guest artist at the 2016 University of North Texas Keyboard
Percussion Symposium. In addition, Lang spent eight summers as principal percussionist
for the Breckenridge Music Festival in Breckenridge, Colorado, and one summer as princi-
pal percussionist of the Music in the Mountains Festival in Durango, Colorado.
As well as serving on the percussion faculties at Southern Methodist University and
Eastfield College, Lang is director of the “Marimba Madness” summer junior high and
high school percussion camp.
Teaching Percussion
with Videos
General Considerations
1
c h a p t e r
and Prerequisites
the twentieth century and now into the new millennium,

T
hroughout
composers of serious orchestral, band, and chamber music have been attracted
to the inherent compositional potentialities of percussion instruments more
than at any time previously in the history of music. By exploring these potentialities
and writing more imaginatively and abundantly for percussion, these composers have
imposed increasing demands on music organizations to provide a larger inventory
of percussion instruments and more well-trained percussionists to perform on these
instruments. The average school percussionist is now likely to be called upon to per-
form technically and musically demanding parts that are far beyond the capabilities
developed through the average school music program. To address these demands of
percussion writing, today’s percussion students and teachers must adopt a system of
study that develops a musical understanding of percussion instruments, their tech-
niques, and their literature. The objectives of such a system can only be fully realized
when consideration is given to all aspects of the percussionist’s education and the envi-
ronment in which the study and performance occur.
Too often, the standard music aptitude tests will result in a person’s being assigned
to “play the drums” because he or she indicated a weakness in perceiving relative pitch
or seemed to be lacking in “intelligence” or “seriousness” with regard to musical abil-
ity and study. As will be clear from the following chapters, the musical demands on the
percussionists are equal to, if not greater than, the complexity of those encountered in
the study of any musical instrument. Therefore, the person who undertakes the study
of percussion should at least possess average musical skills and perhaps display excep-
tional intelligence and seriousness.
The percussion student’s (and teacher’s) initial exposure to percussion study should
include discussions about the historical considerations of percussion music and styles
and the development of a complete theoretical understanding of music. This under-
standing of the rhythmic, melodic, harmonic, and structural elements in music is most
naturally developed while pursuing the technical and aural study of both the drums and
percussion keyboard instruments. In addition, piano study is highly recommended,
although starting the percussionist first on some band or orchestra instrument other
than percussion is not. If a marimba, xylophone, or vibraphone is definitely not avail-
able, then a “percussion kit” may be used that includes a drum or pad and bells. As soon
as possible, the school and/or the serious student should acquire one of the larger key-
board instruments for continued study.
To advance the musical and technical development of the percussionist further,
solo literature should be studied and a percussion ensemble established. It is through
1
2 Chapter 1
percussion ensemble performance that the student will learn musical ensemble listen-
ing and sensitive playing habits, become familiar with a variety of percussion instru-
ments, and be challenged technically and musically beyond the average demands of
band or orchestral literature. Working with the percussion ensemble will also enable
the teacher, and especially the nonpercussionist music educator, to best understand the
percussion instruments and his or her percussionists.
Successful percussion education and acquisition of musical concepts of perfor-
mance are facilitated when the training of the percussion student
n Is based on practical and logical development of playing techniques and aural
skills
n Examines percussion’s heritage, literature development, and organization con
siderations
n Cultivates an aesthetic appreciation and general understanding of music
n Offers the student meaningful and provocative musical experiences
n Percussion Performance and Education

General Considerations
Percussion writing has evolved to its present prestigious and complex level in music.
Composers incorporated percussion sounds into their scores gradually, after careful
experimentation and consideration over a long period. These evolutionary develop-
ments in percussion writing have resulted in increased use of percussion in music at all
educational levels, from college down through elementary school band, orchestra, and
small ensemble literature—with greater technical and musical demands placed on the
performing school percussionist. The percussion teacher and performer need to con-
cern themselves initially with adopting a percussion teaching and playing system that
addresses these technical and musical demands and develops a knowledgeable musi-
cian. The need for a consistent playing system on all percussion instruments is primary
in this era of the total percussionist. In preparation for the study of the techniques of
playing, a familiarity with the instruments and their notation is essential.
Classification of Instruments
A survey of the modern symphony orchestra will reveal a division of the instruments
into three major families: the strings, the winds (perhaps further divided into wood-
winds and brass), and the percussion. Similarly, the instruments in a concert or march-
ing band can be categorized as the winds (again, perhaps woodwinds and brass) and
the percussion. Yet while comprising one-third of the instrumental families in an
orchestra and one-half of the instrumental families in a band, the instruments of the per-
cussion section are entrusted to a very few performers. Each percussionist must possess
an immediate familiarity with the many different instruments that he or she is called
upon to play. This great variety of percussion instruments is commonly divided into
two separate groups: those of definite pitch and those of indefinite pitch (or, as Cecil
Forsyth’s Orchestration states, “musical” and “unmusical”).1 However, a more detailed
examination and logical classification of this large family of instruments will yield Curt
Sachs’s classification of idiophones, membranophones, chordophones, and aerophones2; this
classification, then, as Reginald Brindle suggests, may be subdivided further according
to possible musical characteristics, resulting in: (1) tuned instruments, (2) instruments of
indefinite pitch, and (3) instruments usually considered to be of indefinite pitch but that
can be tuned.3
Idiophones The idiophones produce sounds through the vibration of their entire

body. Although they are usually struck to make a sound—as is a cymbal, triangle, wood
General Considerations and Prerequisites 3
block, clave, slapstick, or keyboard percussion instrument—they may be shaken,

scraped, rubbed, or bowed, as is a maraca or guiro. (See Chapter 1 video: Track 1 dem-
onstrations.) The keyboard percussion instruments, chromatic cowbells, steel drums,
and authentic gongs comprise the tuned idiophone list, with most other idiophones
classified as indefinite pitch even though a set of temple blocks or wood blocks or a
number of graduated cymbals or triangles may be grouped in an intervallic relationship
to sustain melodic ideas. The unique tonal quality or timbre of most indefinite pitch
idiophones (as well as indefinite pitch membranophones) allows for a blending of their
sound with pitched orchestral and band instruments without unpleasant dissonances.
Membranophones The membranophones produce sounds through the vibration

of a membrane, usually an animal skin or plastic head, stretched over a shell or bowl.
There are various constructions of these drums: shells with open ends, as is the case
with timbales, bongos, and some tom toms shells with ends closed by a membrane that
sympathetically vibrates with the struck membrane and air chamber within the shell, as
with snare drums and most bass drums and tom toms; and the closed shell or bowl of the
timpani or tabla. (See Chapter 1 video: Track 1 demonstrations.) Timpani and the tabla
are tuned to specific pitches and, along with the shell-less roto-toms, are clearly dis-
cernible as tuned membranophones. Most other drums are considered indefinite pitch,
although many of the open-end or single-headed bongos and tom toms are capable of
being tuned to definite pitches. Developments in marching percussion include multi-
toms and tonal bass drums that are deliberately tuned to definite pitches (see Chapter
9). However, their pitch is often unclear, and therefore they are not generally classified
as tuned membranophones but indefinite pitch membranophones that can be tuned.
Chordophones Chordophones produce sounds through the vibration of strings

stretched over or through a resonating box that helps to amplify the sound. Most chor-
dophones are tuned and are played by striking, stroking, rubbing, or plucking, as with
the cimbalom or zither, or are played by a hammer striking or plucking a string through
a keyboard action, as with the piano or harpsichord. Because of this, the piano is some-
times called a percussion instrument. The lion’s roar is a common percussion chordo-
phone. (See Chapter 1 video: Track 1 demonstration.)
Aerophones Aerophones produce sounds through the vibration of an enclosed air

column, usually set into motion by air blown across a reed or special aperture. Percus-
sion aerophones include various kinds of train, bird, boat, and slide whistles as well
as sirens, horns, wind machines, and bull roarers, the latter causing air itself to vibrate
when swung overhead. Although some percussion aerophones produce a definite pitch,
they are generally not classified as tuned. (See Chapter 1 video: Track 1 demonstrations.)
Electrophones
Contributions by Scott Deal
Another category of percussion instruments is the electronic percussions or electro-
phones. In addition to electronic instruments, these include the use of microphones with
acoustic instruments for sound amplification, reinforcement, or to obtain unique effects
when fed through complex filters, processors, mixers, and amplifiers.
The growth and development of the electronic and percussion media over the last
century and a half are strikingly intertwined. Their nearly simultaneous development is
rooted to enormous technological innovations in the late nineteenth century that served
as a catalyst for new and revolutionary musical thought. As technology progressed
through the twentieth century, composers and musicians sought new forms of expres-
sion, and perhaps the most important medium that came out of this quest was noise, or
un-pitched sound. Early pioneers in the use of noise as an expressive medium produced
great works in both electronic and percussion genres.
4 Chapter 1
Edgar Varese’s Ionization (1931) for 13 percussionists is regarded as one of the great
musical masterpieces of the twentieth century. In it and his other works of the 1930s (he
used the Thereminvox in Equitorial in 1943), Varese took acoustic sounds and sonorities
as far as he could with the compositional materials available. With the advent of musique
concrete on tape in the 1940s and electronic laboratories in the 1950s, Varese and other
composers now had new composition materials. In 1954 he produced Déserts, one of
his most important works, for wind instruments, percussion, piano, and electronically
produced sounds on tape. Varese created his Poème Electronic for 425 loudspeakers at
the Brussels Exposition in 1957, after a nearly two-decade hiatus from composing as he
waited for these new musical resources. Poème Electronic is one of the landmark elec-
tronic compositions of the twentieth century.
In addition to Varese’s works, John Cage’s Amores (1943), for percussion ensem-
ble with prepared piano, is regarded as a classic, and his Imaginary Landscape series
(1942–1951) is a monumental work for percussion and electronic sounds. Cage fur-
ther experimented with electronics in 1960 with his Cartridge Music and used it in his
lecture, “Where Are We Going and What Are We Doing?” in the same year. In addi-
tion, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Electronic Studies (1954) became the first published
score of electronic music. His Kontakte (1960) for piano, percussion, and electronic
sounds on tape and his Microphonie I (1966) for amplified tam tam are examples of
his style of incorporating acoustic percussion with electronics. In light of the way
these two media were used in tandem, it is not surprising that electronic percussion
instruments were eventually created and became an essential part of the percussion-
ist’s tool kit.
The use of electronics and percussion was generally confined to experimental music
until the 1960s, when continued technological and cultural advancements paved the
way for widespread musical use. The ability to build affordable high-quality electronic
devices meant that many more people could create meaningful music. Consequently,
electronic sound as a medium sprang forth from the culture of experimental music and
spread to virtually every other genre. The first commercially accessible synthesizer was
the Mini Moog synthesizer, which became very popular after Wendy Carlos recorded
Switched on Bach in 1968. This album of Johann Sebastian Bach’s compositions was per-
formed entirely on the larger and more expensive Moog synthesizer and became a huge
international success.
With the widespread popularity of the Mini Moog, other synthesizers became
available commercially, so that by the 1970s many devices were in use across the spec-
trum of musical styles, including Classical, jazz, funk, rock, pop, and country. The first
widely marketed drum synthesizer was the Moog 1130 Drum Controller. This device,
introduced in 1973, gave audiences their first exposure to synthesized drums in the
concerts of progressive rock bands such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Other devices,
most featuring minimal built-in synthesizers, followed in the pre-MIDI era of the later
1970s and can be heard in much of the dance/disco music of that time, notably the
Pearl synthetic drums, the Synares, the Syndrum, and the percussion interfaces from
ElectroHarmonix.4
In the 1980s, as computer microprocessors became more integral to synthesizers,
a computer protocol called musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) was devel-
oped to enable instruments to be connected and to work in tandem. With the advent of
MIDI, many new devices came into the music market, including programmable drum
machines capable of playing dance beats independently and percussion controllers,
which when struck would measure contact and impact velocity and send MIDI infor-
mation to modules containing drum and percussion sounds.
Samplers also became very popular in the 1980s. A sampler differs from a synthe-
sizer in that it plays recorded sounds as opposed to electronically produced sounds. The
Linn LM-1, built by Roger Linn in 1980, was the first drum machine to use sampled drum
sounds. A host of drum machines followed, including the Linn Drum, the E-Mu Sys-
tems Drumulator, and the Roland TR-808. In 1982, the Simmons Company of the United
Kingdom introduced the first digital drum set. In 1985, Roland followed Simmons
with an electronic drum kit of its own, the DDR-30. Soon, drum machines and electronic
drum sets were made by Dynacord, E-Mu Systems, Kawai, Korg, Oberheim, Pearl, Sequen-
tial Circuits, and Yamaha. As manufacturers perfected the MIDI specification over the next
several years, other percussion controllers came into the marketplace. In 1985 Simmons
introduced the Silicon Mallet, the first commercially available mallet configured control-
ler. In 1986, Roland introduced the Pad-8 (later known as the Octa-Pad), a dedicated per-
cussion controller with eight playing surfaces and a variety of MIDI controlling functions.
In the early 1990s Bill Katoski, founder of the Massachusetts-based KAT Corporation (now
called Alternate Mode), invented the MalletKAT, a mallet controller with up to a four-
octave range and in 1995 introduced the DrumKAT, a percussion controller very similar to
the Octa-Pad and TrapKAT. In 1999 Roland introduced its V‑drums electronic drum tech-
nology to the world of hand percussion with their HPD‑15 HandSonic Hand Percussion
Pad, capable of triggering 300 drum sounds by hand from 15 pads. See Scott Deal’s com-
ments and demonstrations of the MalletKAT and DrumKAT and their use in education on
the Chapter 1 video: Track 1. Also see Chapter 1 video: Track 3 by Drew Lang of new elec-
trophones and their applications, and video and audio demonstrations of electrophones
at www.alternatemode.com and www.roland.com/uk/categories/drums_percussion/.
By the 1990s MIDI controllers had become very powerful and quite sophisticated in
their number of functions and the degree to which they could perform according to the
wishes of musicians. Aesthetically, however, many musicians and concertgoers found
that MIDI percussion controllers did not measure up to the sophistication of acoustic
percussion instruments in their sound and in the way they are performed, and since the
late 1990s there has been a trend toward refining uses for MIDI percussion controllers.
Although MIDI controllers have retreated somewhat from the concert stage in favor
of acoustic instruments, they thrive in recording studios, and the MIDI protocol has
become an indispensable component to the modern musician.
MIDI is used as the basis for notation software programs such as Finale and Sibel-
ius, and it is also the foundation for DAW, or digital audio workstation software. DAW
software is multi-use and can record and play back musical sound sources such as sam-
plers, synthesizers, and sound processors. These sound devices are available as stand-
alone boxes or as software. DAW software is also capable of digital recording and sound
processing, so a musician can have MIDI signals playing sound modules while simulta
neously playing a recording of a singer or instrumentalist. Today, music technology
has become so sophisticated that it becomes hard to imagine what it c annot do. Most of
what is heard in commercial and industrial music today is produced on s oftware.
Percussion controllers are found in almost every aspect of music performance and
production, and music technology in general has become an integral part of the total
music experience. Enhancing the band or orchestra classroom with percussion control-
lers ensures young students are receiving a realistic exposure to the music world at
large. (See video demonstrations of electronic drum set in Chapter 8.)
Tone Production on Percussion Instruments

The acoustical properties of percussion instruments vary greatly according to instru-
ment size and construction. Membranophones produce sound when the membrane or
head is put into vibration, usually in combination with air within the drum. They have
three basic sound-producing head areas: (1) center—producing the lowest, fundamental
tone, with a dry, non-ringing quality; (2) off center—producing a very low tone with
much greater resonance than center; and (3) edge—producing a very ringy, light, super-
ficial tone. Excluding timpani, this edge area is unsuitable for loud playing. These play-
ing areas are discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2 (snare drum), Chapter 5 (timpani),
and Chapter 6 (bass drum) and are demonstrated on their respective chapter’s videos.
Idiophones produce sound when their bodies are caused to vibrate. Excepting
keyboard instruments, most idiophones have a fundamental playing spot (sometimes
referred to as “sweet spot”) and other playing areas that may be struck for effect or color
sounds but are not generally recognized as the best characteristic sound-producing
6 Chapter 1
areas of the instrument. However, the deliberate manipulation of timbre and tone color
by varying playing spots on keyboard percussion instrument bars is essential to perfor-
mance with musical expression. Stick selection aside, the musical context of a passage
will suggest the use of a particular playing spot to a sensitive performer. Great care must
be taken to maintain the selected playing spot to achieve tonal consistency throughout
the performance. (See Chapter 1 video: Track 2 demonstrations.)
Basic tone production on all struck percussion instruments requires an understand-
ing of grip and stroke. In general, if a resonant, full-sounding, or legato tone is desired,
a relaxed grip and fluid stroke is employed with a stick or beater. (Although legato actu-
ally refers to the connection of notes, the term is used here in its traditional sense to con-
vey a fully sustained, resonant tone quality. It also connotes the proper type of stroke
that is fundamental to optimum technical and musical development.) On membrano-
phones especially, the stroke is usually made in such a way that the beater is allowed
to rebound off the playing surface free of any resistance in the grip or stroke. This ini-
tial legato approach to tone production (presented consistently throughout this text)
will develop a flexible technique that will later enable the performer to alter the grip
and stroke to varying degrees, as intended, and therefore affect the sound produced. A
slight alteration in the grip or stroke can result in a sharper and dryer attack sound or,
conversely, a lighter sound. The sharper attack requires a firmer grip and shorter, stiffer
stroke, which together result in the beater’s remaining on the playing surface slightly
longer (a fraction of a second) and therefore creating a dryer or more staccato sound. A
lighter tone requires a more relaxed grip and quicker lifting of the beater from the play-
ing surface than is obtained by allowing a free, uninhibited rebound.
The ring length, timbre (harmonic structure), and dynamic shading of a tone pro-
duced on idiophones, especially keyboard instruments, is most greatly affected by the
velocity of the stroke. The basic relevant equation for bar ring on keyboard instruments
is 1⁄2M × V2 (one-half the mass of the mallet times the velocity of the mallet squared).
Relaxed, wrist-generated strokes allow for the best control of velocity in keyboard
performance. Any subtle alteration in grip or stroke type should only aid in creating
an “attitude” toward tone production and phrasing that ultimately enhances musical
expression. Although easily described, these articulations are only produced with well-
developed technique and musical sensitivity.
Other factors in tone production are the size, weight, and construction of the beater
and stroke angle. In general, a soft beater will absorb high overtones and produce a
more fundamental tone. As hardness is increased, more partials are heard and, in some
cases, less fundamental. Great care must be taken in selecting appropriate mallets for
the instrument and passage to be played. While in general one may assume a smaller-
headed beater produces a smaller, more compact (or staccato) tone, the weight more
than the size of a beater in many playing situations determines whether a characteristic
sound is produced. Too often timpani mallets are used for rolls on a large bass drum
or tam tam instead of appropriate heavier bass drum or tam tam mallets. Similarly, a
yarn marimba mallet or heavy snare drum stick used on a high-tuned small bongo will
“overplay” or muffle the characteristic tone that should be achieved by using light-
weight dowels or fingers. This muffling of tone that results from using too heavy or too
large a mallet is caused by the mallet’s staying on the striking surface too long because
of weight or by too many vibrations from the instrument being absorbed into the con-
tact area of the mallet head due to its large size. The relation of stroke angle to playing
surface also greatly affects mallet contact area.
Other artistic concepts regarding tone production must be considered when
performing. The reader is referred to sections in each chapter for further discus-
sion of ideas concerning the playing areas on the instrument, placement of strokes
relative to each stick’s striking point in the playing area, sticking choice, direction of
stroke (whether straight up and down or in a slightly clockwise or counter-clockwise
curve), the projection of tone to the listener, and basic concept of tone desired accord-
ing to the musical context of the particular note in the phrase line and the performer’s
mental/aural/kinesthetic image of the music.
Notation Systems for Percussion

With an understanding of the classification of the many percussion instruments, the
percussionist must next learn about the various systems for percussion notation and
become aware of their advantages and disadvantages. The objective of any musi-
cal notation should be to show the performer as clearly as possible what he or she is
expected to play. For percussion writing this would imply using the least number of
written instructions or symbols and the fewest lines as possible. Notation for tuned per-
cussion instruments presents few problems, since a standard five-line staff is used with
appropriate clef signs and key signatures. However, the lack of standardization and
discrepancies in notational practices for untuned percussion result in serious notational
problems for the percussionist as well as the composer and conductor.
Of the basic systems of notation generally used—(1) staff, (2) line score, (3) symbol
notation, (4) combined line score and symbol notation, and (5) adapted keyboard nota-
tion—the conventional five-line staff is most common. Standard orchestral and band
percussion parts written on a conventional staff afford the performer a clear under-
standing of what needs to be played as long as only a few instruments are written on the
same staff. Example 1-A is a typical march part for snare drum, bass drum, and cymbals
(three players). The cymbals and bass drum play together (notated tog.) unless stated
separately.
EXAMP L E 1-A n Typical march notation
The conventional staff has also sufficed for notating simple standard drum set
music (Example 1-B). See Chapter 8 for further examples.
EXAMP L E 1-B n Drum set notation
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possession, and, at the same time, a gift from above. A little simple
reasonable teaching may help. But let us beware of much talk. “Have
you quite finished, mother?” said a bright little girl of five in the most
polite way in the world. She had listened long to her mother’s
sermonising, and had many things on hand. A wise word here and
there may be of use, but much more may be done by carefully
hindering each “defect of its quality” from coming into play. Give the
ill weeds no room to grow. Then, again, the defect may often be
reclaimed and turned back to feed the quality itself. The ambitious
boy’s love of power may be worked into a desire to win by love his
restive little brother. The passion of the loving girl may be made to
include all whom her mother loves.
There is another aspect of the subject of heredity and the duties it
entails. As the child of long lineage may well inherit much of what
was best in his ancestors—fine physique, clear intellect, high moral
worth—so also he has his risks. As some one puts it, not all the
women have been brave, nor all the men chaste. We know how the
tendency to certain forms of disease runs in families. Temper and
temperament, moral and physical nature alike, may come down with
a taint. An unhappy child may, by some odd freak of nature, appear
to have left out the good and taken into him only the unworthy. What
can the parents do in such a case? They may not reform him—
perhaps that is beyond human skill and care, once he has become
all that is possible to his nature—but transform him, so that the being
he was calculated to become never develops at all; but another
being comes to light blest with every grace of which he had only the
defect. This brings us to a beneficent law of nature, which underlies
the whole subject of early training, and especially so this case of the
child whose mother must bring him forth a second time into a life of
beauty and harmony. To put it in an old form of words—the words of
Thomas à Kempis—what seems to me the fundamental law of
education is no more than this: “Habit is driven out by habit.” People
have always known that “Use is second nature,” but the reason why,
and the scope of the saying, these are discoveries of recent days.
A child has an odious custom, so constant, that it is his quality, will
be his character if you let him alone; he is spiteful, he is sly, he is
sullen. No one is to blame for it; it was born in him. What are you to
do with such inveterate habit of nature? Just this; treat it as a bad
habit, and set up the opposite good habit. Henry is more than
mischievous; he is a malicious little boy. There are always tears in
the nursery, because, with “pinches, nips, and bobs,” he is making
some child wretched. Even his pets are not safe; he has done his
canary to death by poking at it with a stick through the bars of its
cage; howls from his dog, screeches from his cat, betray him in
some vicious trick. He makes fearful faces at his timid little sister;
sets traps with string for the housemaid with her water-cans to fall
over; there is no end to the malicious tricks, beyond the mere
savagery of untrained boyhood, which come to his mother’s ear.
What is to be done? “Oh, he will grow out of it!” say the more hopeful
who pin their faith to time. But many an experienced mother will say,
“You can’t cure him; what is in will out, and he will be a pest to
society all his life.” Yet the child may be cured in a month if the
mother will set herself to the task with both hands and set purpose;
at any rate, the cure may be well begun, and that is half done.
Let the month of treatment be a deliciously happy month to him,
he living all the time in the sunshine of his mother’s smile. Let him
not be left to himself to meditate or carry out ugly pranks. Let him
feel himself always under a watchful, loving, and approving eye.
Keep him happily occupied, well amused. All this, to break the old
custom which is assuredly broken when a certain length of time goes
by without its repetition. But one habit drives out another. Lay new
lines in the old place. Open avenues of kindness for him. Let him
enjoy, daily, hourly, the pleasure of pleasing. Get him into the way of
making little plots for the pleasure of the rest—a plaything of his
contriving, a dish of strawberries of his gathering, shadow rabbits to
amuse the baby; take him on kind errands to poor neighbours,
carrying and giving of his own. For a whole month the child’s whole
heart is flowing out in deeds and schemes and thoughts of loving-
kindness, and the ingenuity which spent itself in malicious tricks
becomes an acquisition to his family when his devices are
benevolent. Yes; but where is his mother to get time in these
encroaching days to put Henry under special treatment? She has
other children and other duties, and simply cannot give herself up for
a month or a week to one child. If the boy were ill, in danger, would
she find time for him then? Would not other duties go to the wall, and
leave her little son, for the time, her chief object in life? Now here is a
point all parents are not enough awake to—that mental and moral
ailments require prompt, purposeful, curative treatment, to which the
parents must devote themselves for a short time, just as they would
to a sick child. Neither punishing him nor letting him alone—the two
lines of treatment most in favour—ever cured a child of any moral
evil. If parents recognised the efficacy and the immediate effect of
treatment, they would never allow the spread of ill weeds. For let this
be borne in mind, whatever ugly quality disfigures the child, he is but
as a garden overgrown with weeds, the more prolific the weeds, the
more fertile the soil; he has within him every possibility of beauty of
life and character. Get rid of the weeds and foster the flowers. It is
hardly too much to say that most of the failures in life or character
made by man or woman are due to the happy-go-lucky philosophy of
the parents. They say, “The child is so young; he does not know any
better; but all that will come right as he grows up.” Now, a fault of
character left to itself can do no other than strengthen.
An objection may be raised to this counsel of short and
determined curative treatment. The good results do not last, it is
said; a week or two of neglect, and you lose the ground gained:
Henry is as likely as ever to grow up of the “tiger” order, a Steerforth
or a Grandcourt. Here science comes to help us to cheerful certainty.
There is no more interesting subject of inquiry open just now than
that of the interaction between the thoughts of the mind and the
configuration of the brain. The fair conclusion appears to be that
each is greatly the cause of the other; that the character of the
persistent thoughts actually shapes the cerebrum, while on the
configuration of this organ depends in turn the manner of thoughts
we think. Now, thought is, for the most part, automatic. We think,
without intention or effort, as we have been accustomed to think, just
as we walk or write without any conscious arrangement of muscles.
Mozart could write an overture, laughing all the time at the little jokes
his wife made to keep him awake; to be sure he had thought it out
before, and there it was, ready to be written; but he did not
consciously try for these musical thoughts, they simply came to him
in proper succession. Coleridge thought “Kubla Khan” in his sleep,
and wrote it when he awoke; and, indeed, he might as well have
been asleep all the time for all he had to do with the production of
most of his thoughts.
“Over the buttons she falls asleep,
And stitches them on in a dream,”—
is very possible and likely. For one thing which we consciously set
ourselves to think about, a thousand words and acts come from us
every day of their own accord; we don’t think of them at all. But all
the same, only a poet or a musician could thus give forth poetry or
music, and it is the words and acts which come from us without
conscious thought which afford the true measure of what we are.
Perhaps this is why such serious weight is attached to our every “idle
word”—words spoken without intention or volition.
We are getting, by degrees, to Henry and his bad habits.
Somehow or other, the nervous tissue of the cerebrum “grows to” the
thoughts that are allowed free course in the mind. How, Science
hardly ventures to guess as yet; but, for the sake of illustration, let us
imagine that certain thoughts of the mind run to and fro in the
nervous substance of the cerebrum until they have made a way
there: busy traffic in the same order of thoughts will always be kept
up, for there is the easy way for them to run in. Now, take the child
with an inherited tendency to a resentful temper: he has begun to
think resentful thoughts: finds them easy and gratifying; he goes on;
evermore the ugly traffic becomes more easy and natural, and
resentfulness is rapidly becoming himself, that trait in his character
which people couple with his name.
But one custom overcomes another. The watchful mother sets up
new tracks in other directions; and she sees to it, that while she is
leading new thoughts through the new way, the old, deeply worn
“way of thinking” is quite disused. Now, the cerebrum is in a state of
rapid waste and rapid growth. The new growth takes shape from the
new thoughts: the old is lost in the steady waste, and the child is
reformed, physically as well as morally and mentally. That the
nervous tissue of the cerebrum should be thus the instrument of the
mind need not surprise us when we think how the muscles and joints
of the tumbler, the vocal organs of the singer, the finger-ends of the
watchmaker, the palate of the tea-taster, grow to the uses they are
steadily put to; and, much more, both in the case of brain and of
bodily organs, grow to the uses they are earliest put to.
This meets in a wonderful way the case of the parent who sets
himself to cure a moral failing. He sets up the course of new
thoughts, and hinders those of the past, until the new thoughts shall
have become automatic and run of their own accord. All the time a
sort of disintegration is going on in the place that held the disused
thoughts; and here is the parent’s advantage. If the boy return (as,
from inherited tendency, he still may do) to his old habits of thought,
behold there is no more place for them in his physical being; to make
a new place is a work of time, and in this work the parent can
overtake and hinder him without much effort.
Here, indeed, more than anywhere, “Except the Lord build the
house, they labour but in vain that build it;” but surely intelligent co-
operation in this divine work is our bounden duty and service. The
training of the will, the instruction of the conscience, and, so far as it
lies with us, the development of the divine life in the child, are carried
on simultaneously with this training in the habits of a good life; and
these last will carry the child safely over the season of infirm will,
immature conscience, until he is able to take, under direction from
above, the conduct of his life, the moulding of his character into his
own hands. It is a comfort to believe that there is even a material
register of our educational labours being made in the very substance
of the child’s brain; and, certainly, here we have a note of warning as
to the danger of letting ill ways alone in the hope that all will come
right by-and-by.
Some parents may consider all this as heavy hearing; that even to
“think on these things” is enough to take the joy and
spontaneousness out of their sweet relationship; and that, after all,
parents’ love and the grace of God should be sufficient for the
bringing up of children. No one can feel on this subject more sincere
humility than those who have not the honour to be parents; the
insight and love with which parents—mothers most so—are blest, is
a divine gift which fills lookers-on with reverence, even in many a
cottage home; but we have only to observe how many fond parents
make foolish children to be assured that something more is wanted.
There are appointed ways, not always the old paths, but new ones,
opened up step by step as we go. The labour of the mother who sets
herself to understand her work is not increased, but infinitely
lightened; and as for life being made heavy with the thought of these
things, once make them our own, and we act upon them as naturally
as upon such knowledge—scientific also—as, loose your hold of a
cup—and it falls. A little painstaking thought and effort in the first
place, and all comes easy.
CHAPTER X
BIBLE LESSONS
“The history of England is now reduced to a game at cards,—the problems of
mathematics to puzzles and riddles.... There wants but one step further, and the
Creed and Ten Commandments may be taught in the same manner, without the
necessity of the grave face, deliberate tone of recital, and devout attention hitherto
exacted from the well-governed childhood of this realm.”—Waverley.
That parents should make over the religious education of their

children to a Sunday-school is, no doubt, as indefensible as if they
sent them for their meals to a table maintained by the public bounty.
We “at home” plead “not guilty” to this particular count. Our Sunday-
schools are used by those toil-worn and little-learned parents who
are willing to accept at the hands of the more leisured classes this
service of the religious teaching of their children. That is, the
Sunday-school is, at present, a necessary evil, an acknowledgment
that there are parents so hard pressed that they are unable for their
first duty. Here we have the theory of the Sunday-school—the
parents who can, teach their children at home on Sunday, and
substitutes step in to act for those who can not. It is upon this
delightful theory of the Sunday-school that a clergyman[7] at the
Antipodes has taken action. Never does it appear to occur to him
that the members of the upper and middle classes do not need to be
definitely and regularly instructed in religion—“from a child.” His
contention is, only, that such children should not be taught at
Sunday-school, but at home, and by their parents; and the main
object of his parochial “Parents’ Union” is to help parents in this
work. These are some of the rules:—
1. The object of the Union shall be to unite, strengthen, and assist
fathers and mothers in the discharge of their parental duties.
2. Members shall be pledged, by the fact of their joining, to
supervise the education of their own children, and to urge the
responsibility of the parental relationship upon other parents.
3. Lesson sketches shall be furnished monthly to each family in
connection with the Union.
4. Members shall bring their children to the monthly catechising,
and sit with them, &c., &c.
Probably the “lesson-sketches” are to secure that the children do
just such Bible-lessons at home with their parents on Sunday as they
have hitherto done at the Sunday-school with teachers.
It seems to be contemplated that parents of every class will
undertake their proper duties in this matter, and that the Sunday-
school may be allowed to drop, the clergyman undertaking instead to
ascertain, by means of catechising, that certain work is done month
by month.
The scheme seems full of promise. Nothing should do more to
strengthen the bonds of family life than that the children should learn
religion at the lips of their parents; and, to grow up in a church which
takes constant heed of you from baptism or infancy, until, we will not
say confirmation, but through manhood and womanhood, until the
end, should give the right tone to corporate life.
No doubt we have parishes, and even whole denominations, in
which the young people are taken hold of from first to last; but then it
is by clergy, teachers, class leaders, and so on; and all parents do
not regard it as an unmixed blessing that the most serious part of
their children’s training should be undertaken by outsiders. The thing
that seems most worthy of imitation in this Australian movement is,
that parents themselves are recognised as the fit instructors of their
children in the best things, and that they are led to acknowledge
some responsibility to the Church with regard to the instruction they
give.
But do we manage these things so well “at home” that we have no
occasion to look about us for hints? It may be in the memories of
some of us, that in May 1889, a Committee of the House of Laymen
for the Province of Canterbury was appointed to examine into the
religious education of the upper and middle classes.[8] The
committee considered that they might obtain a good basis for their
investigations by examining into the religious knowledge of boys
entering school. They sent a paper of inquiries to sixty-two head-
masters, most of whom sent replies; and from these replies the
committee were led to conclude that, “for the most part, the standard
of religious education attained by boys before going to school is far
below what might be hoped or expected; and that even this
standard, thus ascertained to be far too low, is deteriorating; and
further, that the chief cause of deterioration is considered to be the
want of home-teaching and religion.”
Here is matter of grave consideration for us all—for, though the
investigation was conducted by Churchmen, it naturally covered
boys of various denominations attending public and middle-class
schools; the distinctive character of the religious education was the
subject of separate inquiry. No doubt there are many beautiful
exceptions—families brought up in quiet homes in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord; but if it is, as some of us fear, a fact that
there is a tendency among parents of the middle and upper classes
to let the religious education of their children take care of itself, it is
worth while to ask, What is the reason? and, What is the remedy?
Many reasons are assigned for this alleged failure in parental duty—
social claims, the restive temper of the young people and their
impatience of religious teaching, and much else. But these reasons
are inadequate. Parents are, on the whole, very much alive to their
responsibilities; perhaps there has never been a generation more
earnest and conscientious than the young parents of these days. All
the same, these thoughtful young parents do not lay themselves out
to teach their children religion, before all things.
The fact is, our religious life has suffered, and by-and-by our
national character will suffer, for the discredit thrown upon the Bible
by adverse critics. We rightly regard the Bible as the entire collection
of our Sacred Books. We have absolutely nothing to teach but what
we find written therein. But we no longer go to the Bible with the old
confidence: our religion is fading into a sentiment, not easy to impart;
we wait until the young people shall conceive it for themselves.
Meantime, we give them such æsthetic culture as should tend to
develop those needs of the soul that find their satisfaction in worship.
The whole superstructure of “liberal” religious thought is miserably
shaky, and no wonder there is some shrinking from exposing it to the
Ithuriel’s spear of the definite and searching young mind. For we love
this flimsy habitation we have builded. It bears a shadowy
resemblance to the old home of our souls, and we cling to it with a
tender sentiment which the younger generation might not
understand.
Are we then unhoused? Undoubtedly we are upon one
assumption—that assumption which it takes a brilliant novelist to put
forth in its naked asperity—“Miracles do not happen.” The educated
mind is more essentially logical than we are apt to suppose. Remove
the keystone of miracle and the arch tumbles about our ears. The
ostentatious veneration for the Person of Christ, as separated from
the “mythical” miraculous element, is, alas! no more than a spurious
sentiment toward a self-evolved conception. Eliminate the
“miraculous” and the whole fabric of Christianity disappears; and not
only so, what have we to do with that older revelation of “the Lord,
the Lord, a God full of compassion and gracious”? Do we say, Nay,
we keep this; here is no miracle; and, of Christ, have we not the
inimitable Sermon on the Mount—sufficient claim on our allegiance?
No, we have not; therein are we taught to pray, to consider the lilies
of the field and the fowls of the air, and to remember that the very
hairs of our head are all numbered. Here we have the doctrine of the
personal dealing, the particular providence of God, which is of the
very essence of miracle. If “miracles do not happen,” it is folly and
presumption to expect in providence and invite in prayer the faintest
disturbance of that course of events which is fixed by inevitable law.
The educated mind is severely logical, though an effort of the will
may keep us from following out our conclusions to the bitter end.
What have we left? A God who, of necessity, can have no personal
dealings with you or me, for such dealings would be of the nature of
a miracle: a God, prayer to whom, in the face of such certainty,
becomes blasphemous. How dare we approach the Highest with
requests which, in the nature of things (as we conceive), it is
impossible He should grant?
We cannot pray, and we cannot trust, may be; yet we are not
utterly godless; we can admire, adore, worship, in uttermost humility.
But how? What shall we adore? The Divine Being can be known to
us only through His attributes; He is a God of love and a God of
justice; full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and
plenteous in mercy. But these are attributes which can only be
conceived of as in action, from Person to person. How be gracious
and merciful unless to a being in need of grace and mercy? Grant
that grace and mercy may modify the slightest circumstance in a
man’s existence, spiritual or temporal, and you grant the whole
question of “miracles”—that is, that it is possible to God to act
otherwise than through such inevitable laws as we are able to
recognise. Refuse to concede “the miraculous element,” and the
Shepherd of Israel has departed from our midst; we are left
orphaned in a world undone.
Such and so great are the issues of that question of “miracle” with
which we are fond of dallying, with a smile here and a shrug there,
and a special sneer for that story of the swine that ran violently down
a steep place, because we know so much about the dim thoughts of
the brute creation—living under our eyes, indeed, but curiously out of
our ken. Grant the possibility of miracles, that is, of the voluntary
action of a Personal God, and who will venture to assign limits of
less or more?
How long halt we betwixt two opinions?—to the law and to the
testimony. Let us boldly accept the alternative which Hume
proposes, however superciliously. Let it be, that, “no testimony is
sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a
kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which
it endeavours to establish.” Even so. We believe that Christ rose
again the third day and ascended into heaven; or we credit the far
more miraculous hypothesis that “there is no God”; or, anyway, the
God of revelation, in His adorable Personality, has ceased to be for
us. There is no middle way. Natural law, as we understand it, has
nothing to do with these issues; not that the Supreme abrogates His
laws, but that our knowledge of “natural law” is so agonisingly limited
and superficial, that we are incompetent to decide whether a break in
the narrow circle, within which our knowledge is hemmed, is or is not
an opening into a wider circle, where what appears to us as an
extraordinary exception does but exemplify the general rule.
We would not undervalue the solid fruits of Biblical criticism, even
the most adverse. This should be a great gain in the spiritual life—
that, henceforth, a miracle is accredited, not merely by the fact that it
is recorded in the sacred history, but by its essential fitness with the
Divine Character; just as, if we may reverently compare human
things with divine, we say of a friend, “Oh, he would never do that!”
or, “That is just like him.” Tried by this test, how unostentatious,
simple, meekly serviceable are the miracles of Christ; how utterly
divine it is
“To have all power, and be as having none!”
The mind which is saturated with the Gospel story in all its sweet
reasonableness, which has absorbed the more confused and broken
rays wherein the Light of the World is manifested in Old Testament
story, will perhaps be the least tempted to the disloyalty of “honest
doubt;”—for disloyalty to the most close and sacred of all
relationships it is, though we must freely concede that such doubt is
the infirmity of noble minds. Believing that faith comes by hearing,
and hearing by the Word of God, that the man is established in the
Christian faith according as the child has been instructed, the
question of questions for us is, how to secure that the children shall
be well grounded in the Scriptures by their parents, and shall pursue
the study with intelligence, reverence, and delight.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] The Rev. E. Jackson, sometime of Sydney.
[8] See “Report of the Committee of the House of Laymen for the
Province of Canterbury on the Duty of the Church with regard to
the Religious Education of the Upper and Middle Classes.”—Nat.
Soc. Depository, Westminster.
CHAPTER XI
FAITH AND DUTY
Reviews
I
Education, properly understood, is the science of life, and every
attempt to formulate this science is to be hailed with interest, and
with a measure of gratitude in proportion to its success. Thinking
minds everywhere are engaged in furnishing their quota towards this
great work, in one or another of its aspects, physical, social,
religious. We see at once the importance of every attempt to solve
social problems or problems of faith, as helping us to understand
those “laws of nature” and “ways of men,” the love, and dutiful
attitude of the will towards which Mr. Huxley considers to be the sole
practical outcome of education. We have before us three important
works[9] on these lines. One deals with the problems of “secular”
morality from an American point of view; the second with the whole
problem of national education from a French and “scientific”
standpoint. The third is not professedly an educational work. It deals
with “the ways of men,” but with the ways of men as they are
concerned with the ways and will of God. That is, it deals with the
deep-seated springs out of which are the issues of life. As the true
educationalist works from within outwards, he will probably find much
aid in a work whose outlook on life is from the standpoint of “faith.”
Mr. Felix Adler, in “The Moral Instruction of Children,” undertakes
a by no means easy task in setting himself to solve the problem of
unsectarian moral instruction. He brings unusual qualifications to the
work—a wide outlook, philosophic training, and that catholic love of
literature and knowledge of books which is essential to the teacher of
morals. The work before us is one which should find a place on
every educated parent’s bookshelves, not perhaps to be swallowed
whole as a “complete guide,” but to be studied with careful attention
and some freedom of choice as to which counsel of perfection is
worthy to be acted upon, and which other counsel may be rejected
as not fitting in with that scheme of educational thought which the
parent has already made for himself. Mr. Adler is most seriously
handicapped at the outset. He writes for American schools, in which
the first condition of moral instruction is that it must be unsectarian.
This he, rightly or wrongly, interprets, to exclude all theistic teaching
whatever; that is to say, the child he writes for has no sanctions
beyond those he finds in his own breast. For example: “It is the
business of the moral instructor in the school to deliver to his pupils
the subject-matter of morality, but not to deal with the sanctions of it.
He says to the pupil, ‘Thou shalt not lie.’ He takes it for granted that
the pupil feels the force of this commandment, and acknowledges
that he ought to yield obedience to it. For my part, I should suspect
of quibbling and dishonest intention any boy or girl who would ask
me, Why ought I not to lie? I should hold up before such a child the
ought in all its awful majesty. The right to reason about these matters
cannot be conceded until after the mind has attained a certain
maturity.”
Where does the ought get its awful majesty? That there is in the
human breast an infallible sense of “ought” is an error prolific of
much evil. It is a popular idea to-day that it is right to do that which
the doer holds to be right; or, as it is popularly expressed, a man
does all that can be expected of him when he acts according to his
“lights.” Now, a very slight acquaintance with history demonstrates
that every persecution and most outrages, from the Inquisition to
Thuggee, are the outcome of that same majesty of “ought,” as it
makes its voice heard in the breast of an individual or of a
community. To attempt to treat of morals without dealing with the
sanctions of morality is to work from the circumference instead of
from the centre.
Moses, Moses und immer Moses! says a German pedagogue of
the modern school, who writes in hot disdain of the old school
system, in which ten or twelve, and, in some of the German States,
fifteen or sixteen hours a week were devoted to Bible-teaching. We
in England, and they in America, also rebel against the Bible as a
class-book. Educationalists say there is so much else to be learned,
that this prolonged study of sacred literature is a grievous waste of
time; and many religious persons, on the other hand, object on the
ground that it is not good to make the Bible common as a class-
book. But it is singular that so few educationalists recognise that the
Bible is not a single book, but a classic literature of wonderful beauty
and interest; that, apart from its Divine sanctions and religious
teaching, from all that we understand by “Revelation,” the Bible, as a
mere instrument of education, is, at the very least as valuable as the
classics of Greece or Rome. Here is poetry, the rhythm of which
soothes even the jaded brain past taking pleasure in any other. Here
is history, based on such broad, clear lines, such dealing of slow and
sure and even-handed justice to the nations, such stories of national
sins and national repentances, that the student realises, as from no
other history, the solidarity of the race, the brotherhood—and, if we
may call it so—the individuality of the nations. Here is philosophy
which, of all the philosophies which have been propounded, is alone
adequate to the interpretation of human life. We say not a word here
of that which is the raison d’être of the Bible—its teaching of religion,
its revelation of God to man; but, to say only one word more, all the
literatures of the world put together utterly fail to give us a system of
ethics, in precept and example, motive and sanction, complete as
that to which we have been born as our common inheritance in the
Bible.
For 1700 years, roughly speaking, the Bible has been the school-
book of modern Europe; its teaching, conveyed directly or indirectly,
more or less pure, has been the basis upon which the whole
superstructure of not only religious but ethical and, to some extent,
literary training rested. Now, the Bible as a lesson-book is tabooed;
and educationalists are called upon to produce what shall take its
place in the origination of ideas and the formation of character. This
is the task to which Mr. Adler sets himself; and that he is at all
successful is obviously due to the fact that his own mind is
impregnated with the Bible-lore and the sacred law which he does
not feel himself at liberty to propound to his students. But this
prepossession of the author’s makes his work very helpful and
suggestive to parents who desire to take the Bible as the
groundwork and the sanction of that moral teaching which they are
glad to supplement from other sources.
May we recommend the following suggestion to parents:—
“Parents and teachers should endeavour to answer such
questions as these: When do the first stirrings of the moral sense
appear in the child? How do they manifest themselves? What are the
emotional and the intellectual equipments of the child at different
periods, and how do these correspond with its moral outfit? At what
time does conscience enter on the scene? To what acts or omissions
does the child apply the terms right or wrong? If observations of this
kind were made with care and duly recorded, the science of
education would have at its disposal a considerable quantity of
material, from which, no doubt, valuable generalisations might be
deduced. Every mother, especially, should keep a diary in which to
note the successive phases of her child’s physical, mental, and
moral growth, with particular attention to the moral; so that parents
may be enabled to make a timely forecast of their children’s
character, to foster in them every germ of good, and by prompt
precautions to suppress, or at least restrain, what is bad.”
We are glad to find that Mr. Adler reinstates fairy tales. He says,
justly, that much of the selfishness of the world is due, not to actual
hard-heartedness, but to a lack of imaginative power; and adds, “I
hold that something, nay, much, has been gained if a child has
learned to take the wishes out of its heart, as it were, and to project
them on the screen of fancy.” The German Märchen hold the first
place in his regards. He says: “They represent the childhood of
mankind, and it is for this reason that they never cease to appeal to
children.”
“But how shall we handle these Märchen? and what method shall
we employ in putting them to account for our special purpose? My
first counsel is, Tell the story. Do not give it to the child to read. The
child, as it listens to the Märchen, looks up with wide-opened eyes to
the face of the person who tells the story, and thrills responsive to
the touch of the earlier life of the race, which thus falls upon its own.”
That is, our author feels, and rightly so, that traditions should be
orally delivered. This is well worth noting. His second counsel is
equally important. “Do not,” he says, “take the moral plum out of the
fairy tale pudding, but let the child enjoy it as a whole.... Treat the
moral element as an incident, emphasise it indeed, but incidentally.
Pluck it as a wayside flower.”
Mr. Felix Adler’s third counsel is, to eliminate from the stories
whatever is merely superstitious, merely a relic of ancient animism,
and, again, whatever is objectionable on moral grounds. In this
connection he discusses the vexed question of how far we should
acquaint children with the existence of evil in the world. His
conclusion is one with which we shall probably be inclined to agree.
“My own view,” he says, “is that we should speak in the child’s
hearing only of those lesser forms of evil, physical or moral, with
which it is already acquainted.” On this ground he would rule out all
the cruel step-mother stories, the unnatural father stories, and so on;
though, probably, most of us would make an exception in favour of
Cinderella, and its charming German rendering Aschenbrödel.
Fables, according to our author, should form the basis of moral
instruction at the second stage; probably when children emerge from
the nursery. We have all grown up on “Æsop’s Fables,” and “The
Dog in the Manger,” “King Log,” “The Frog and the Stork,” have
passed into the current coinage of our thought. But it is interesting to
be reminded that the so-called Æsop’s fables are infinitely older than
the famous Greek story-teller, and are, for the most part, of Asiatic
origin. We are reminded that it is important to keep the origin of this
fable before us, and exercise discrimination in our choice of those
which we use to convey moral ideas to our children. Such fables as
“The Oak and the Reed,” “The Brazen and the Earthen Pot,” “The
Kite and the Wolf,” Mr. Adler would reject, as breathing of Eastern
subserviency and fear. But possibly for the very reason that the
British backbone is little disposed to bow before man or
circumstances, the lessons of life culled by peoples of other habits
and other thoughts may be quite specially useful to the English child.
Anyway, we should lose some of the most charming fables if we cut
out all that savours of the wisdom of the East. The fables Mr. Felix
Adler specially commends are those which hold up virtue for our
praise or evil for our censure; such as Cowardice, the fable of the
“Stag and the Fawn;” Vanity, “The Peacock and the Crane;”
Greediness, “The Dog and the Shadow.”
“In the third part of our primary course, we shall use selected
stories from the classical literature of the Hebrews, and later on from
that of Greece, particularly the ‘Odyssey’ and the ‘Iliad.’”
Here we begin to be at issue with our author. We should not
present Bible stories as carrying only the same moral sanction as the
myths of ancient Greece; neither should we defer their introduction
until the child has gone through a moral course of fairy tales and a
moral course of fables. He should not be able to recall a time before
the sweet stories of old filled his imagination; he should have heard
the voice of the Lord God in the garden in the cool of the evening;
should have been an awed spectator where the angels ascended
and descended upon Jacob’s stony pillow; should have followed
Christ through the cornfield on the Sabbath-day, and sat in the rows
of the hungry multitudes—so long ago that the sacred scenes form
the unconscious background of his thoughts. All things are possible
to the little child, and the touch of the spiritual upon our material
world, the difficult problems, the hard sayings, which are an offence
—in the Bible sense of the word—to his elders, present no difficulties
to the child’s all-embracing faith. We would not say—far otherwise—
that every Bible story is fit for children, because it is a Bible story;
neither would we analyse too carefully, nor draw hard and fast lines
to distinguish what we would call history from that of which it may be
said, “Without a parable spake He not unto them.”
The child is not an exegetical student. The moral teaching, the
spiritual revelations, the lovely imagery of the Bible, are the things
with which he is concerned, and of these he cannot have too much.
As Mr. Adler says, “The narrative of the Bible is saturated with the
moral spirit, the moral issues are everywhere to the forefront. Duty,
guilt and its punishment, the conflict of conscience with inclination,
are the leading themes. The Hebrew people seem to have been
endowed with what may be called a moral genius, and especially did
they emphasise the filial and fraternal duties. Now, it is precisely
these duties that must be impressed on young children.”
Let us see how Mr. Adler would use the Bible narratives. We have
only space for a fragmentary sentence here and there: “Once upon a
time there were two children, Adam and Eve. Adam was a fine and
noble-looking lad.”... “It was so warm that the children never needed
to go indoors.”... “And the snake kept on whispering, ‘Just take one
bite of it; nobody sees you.’”... “You, Adam, must learn to labour, and
you, Eve, to be patient and self-denying for others,” &c.
We leave it to our readers to decide whether “treatment” improves
the Bible narrative, or whether this is the sort of thing to lay hold of a
child’s imagination.
Mr. Ruskin tells us that his incomparable style is due entirely to
his early familiarity with the Bible classics. It is a mistake to translate
Bible stories into slipshod English, even when the narrator keeps
close to the facts of the narrative. The rhythm and cadence of
Biblical phraseology is as charming to a child as to his elders, if not
more so. Read your Bible story to the child, bit by bit; get him to tell
you in his own words (keeping as close as he can to the Bible words)
what you have read, and then, if you like, talk about it; but not much.
Above all, do not let us attempt a “practical commentary on every
verse in Genesis,” to quote the title of a work lately published.
Two points it seems worth while to dwell upon here. Is it advisable
to tell the children the stories of the Bible miracles in an age when
the possibility of miracles is so hotly discussed? In the first place, all
that the most advanced scientists have to urge against “miracles” is
that precisely such phenomena have not come under their personal
notice; but they, before all people, are open to admit that nothing is
impossible and that no experience is final. In the second place, as
for the moral and spiritual instruction which the story of the miracle
affords, it is immaterial whether, in the particular case in question, a
historical fact is recorded, or whether, in this case also, it is true that

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VIDEO TRACKS xii

About the Author xxxi

CH APTER 1 General Considerations and Prerequisites 1

CH APTER 2 Basic Percussion Technique Through the Study

CH APTER 3 Multiple Percussion 79

CH APTER 4 Keyboard Percussion 93

CH APTER 5 Timpani 157

CH APTER 6 Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories 215

CH APTER 7 Percussion Instruments of the World 253

CH APTER 8 Drum Set 294

CH APTER 9 Marching Percussion 329

CH APTER 10 Musical Interpretation of Percussion Parts 425

CH APTER 11 Supplemental Playing Exercises 454

APPENDIX A Orchestral Excerpts for Percussion and Discography

APPENDIX B Select Percussion Solo and Ensemble Music 481

Glossary of Foreign Terms 507

VIDEO TRACKS xii

About the Author xxxi

CH APTER 1 General Considerations and Prerequisites 1

CH APTER 2 Basic Percussion Technique Through the Study

The Attitude Toward Percussion Performance and Education 33

CHA PTER 3 Multiple Percussion 79

CHA PTER 4 Keyboard Percussion 93

Special Effects 118

CH APTER 5 Timpani 157

CHA PTER 6 Bass Drum, Cymbals, and Accessories 215

CH APTER 7 Percussion Instruments of the World 253

CH APTER 8 Drum Set 294

Coordinated Independence, Four-Way Coordination,

CHA PTER 9 Marching Percussion 329

CH APTER 10 Musical Interpretation of Percussion Parts 425

CH APTER 11 Supplemental Playing Exercises 454

APPENDIX A Orchestral Excerpts for Percussion and Discography

APPENDIX B Select Percussion Solo and Ensemble Music 481

Glossary of Foreign Terms 507

CHAPTER 1 GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS AND PREREQUSITES 3. Suspended Cymbals (02:50:01)

1. Introduction (03:12:08) 1. Kinka (05:05:26)

CH APTE R 5 TIMPANI 1. Heritage of Drums (01:32:04)

1. Bass Drum (03:42:02)

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